Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

MOE dislikes independent thinking

Taipei Times Editorial

The Ministry of Education’s (MOE) “minor adjustments” to its high-school social studies curriculum guidelines — returning the viewpoint to a Chinese-centered one — have triggered a major backlash from civic groups and historians, and now the protests are spilling over to those who would be directly affected.

Students from more than 200 high schools are networking to voice their opposition to the changes, and the ministry has organized a series of meetings in a bid to dampen the uproar. The first such meeting was held at Taichung First Senior High School yesterday.

Bullying and cheap tricks to trap Tsai

James Wang 王景弘

President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has said that when he was a reserve officer for the Republic of China (ROC) armed forces, he was selected as a military trainer because of a series of lectures he gave on crushing the Communist United Front plot to unify Taiwan and China.

Had Ma actually remained committed to this cause over the past seven years in which he has been in office, then his popularity rating might never have plummeted to 9 percent, as it has.

A vicious distortion of Taiwan’s history

James Wang 王景弘

President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) are on the brink of collapse and they have few tools left in their bag of tricks.

All they can do is incessantly, and without any semblance of integrity, nag that Democratic Progressive Party Chairperson and presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) “does not speak clearly” in regard to maintaining the so-called cross-strait “status quo.”

It is Ma who has been talking a lot of nonsense and it is he who has been ambiguous.

EU calls for moratorium on executions

Taipei Times

Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty members protest outside the Ministry of Justice building in Taipei on Friday.
Photo: Chien Jung-fong, Taipei Times

The executions of six death-row inmates on Friday triggered a statement from the EU calling for an immediate moratorium on capital punishment in Taiwan, which in turn prompted heated debate among netizens.

The EU issued the statement hours after the executions on Friday night, which brought the number of prisoners executed by President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration to 32 since April 2010, when Ma ended a four-year moratorium on the death penalty.

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