Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Accountability is issue in Taiwan-U.S. beef flap

Taiwan News

Yesterday's consensus among all parties in the Legislative Yuan to rapidly approve a legal ban on the importation of beef products with especially high risk of contamination of "mad cow disease" sent an important message to President Ma Ying-jeou's Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang) government and decision-makers in Washington and Beijing that voices of the Taiwan people cannot be ignored.

Death will not silence the protests

Taipei Times

If China hopes to quell unrest in Xinjiang by kidnapping, jailing or even executing scores of Uighurs, the results will fall short. Decades of oppression — economic, cultural, religious and linguistic — have at times welled into protests or riots in China’s biggest territory, as seen again this summer. Clamping down further on the region, history tells us, is more likely to fuel unrest than squash it.

No need to sign a peace agreement with China

Peng Ming-Min 彭明敏

The Nobel Peace Prize was established more than 100 years ago and it used to be a tremendous honor to be awarded the prize. Unfortunately, some recent choices of recipient have been confusing, even preposterous, and this has undermined the prestige and credibility of the prize.

No more trials by media

Taipei Times

Investigations by prosecutors in Taiwan are a bit like moving water in a bucket riddled with holes — you can count on leaks. Once a criminal investigation is under way, the details soon find their way into the papers and onto TV. Some media outlets and TV pundits then “improve” on the reports. Even if a suspect is later exonerated, it is hard to shake off the “sentence” passed in a trial by media. This essentially undermines the right to a fair trial and should be a concern regardless of whether the suspect is former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) or a baseball player suspected of match-fixing.

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