Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Preventing miscarriages of justice

Chen Yi-shen 陳儀深

This author had the honor of being invited to attend the official online launch of the Transitional Justice Commission’s Taiwan Transitional Justice Database on Feb. 26.

The database has collated records of about 10,000 political victims from during the martial law era. It is the result of more than a year of gathering political archives, statistics and the names and numbers of those prosecuted; identifying the names, ranks and titles of the military judges and prosecutors at the trials; and assigning each a number so that they could be entered in the database.

Trump signs Taiwan Assurance Act

Taipei Times

Presidential Office spokesman Xavier Chang speaks to reporters at a briefing in Taipei on Oct. 20.
Photo: CNA

The US$2.3 trillion government spending package that US President Donald Trump finally signed on Sunday evening incorporates the Taiwan Assurance Act of 2020, as well as money to support activities under the Global Cooperation and Training Framework initiative launched in 2015.

Breaking up China’s global cartel

Huang Tien-lin 黃天麟

After Australia pushed for a WHO probe into the source of COVID-19 at the World Health Assembly in May, China responded by adding an 80.5 percent tariff — consisting of an anti-dumping tax rate of 73.6 percent and a countervailing subsidy margin of 6.9 percent — on Australian barley imports. Beijing also banned four Australian businesses from exporting beef to China, and said that it would ban Chinese tourists from visiting Australia and students from studying there. It also added anti-dumping taxes of 107.1 to 218.1 percent on Australian wine imports.

Taiwan responsible for its isolation

Chang Kuo-tsai 張國財

In early April, Taiwan donated batches of masks to several Western countries to help them in their fight to keep the COVID-19 pandemic under control. The first batches consisted of a total of 10 million masks.

China Airlines was charged with transporting the donated masks and, of course, had the name China Airlines emblazoned on the fuselage of its aircraft, leading to people overseas unfamiliar with the situation mistakenly believing that the delivery came from China, not Taiwan, leading to frustration and resentment at home.

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