Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Fighting for a worthy cause

Taipei Times Editorials

Tseng Sheng-kuang (曾聖光) died fighting in Ukraine on Wednesday last week. Some questioned why he had not stayed here and readied himself to defend Taiwan against a potential invasion by China.

Fighting against the tyranny of aggressive autocracies invading a sovereign nation resonates with Taiwan’s own predicament, on both moral and practical levels. The war in Ukraine is widely seen as a testing ground for the success or failure of a smaller state defending itself against a far larger one, under the conditions of modern warfare and with the support of powerful allies.

Xi’s pursuit of his genocidal goal

Kok Bayraq

No ruler can claim that their autocratic rule is progress or development. Instead, it is wielded in anticipation of an urgent need of the state. What might Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) have presented as an excuse for his extended term?

Today’s Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is a nationalist party, and at its recent party congress, terms such as “proletariat,” “oppressed,” “workers” or “communism” were nowhere to be heard. There is only one goal: the revival of the Chinese nation leading to world domination. The phrase “socialism with Chinese characteristics” is essentially nothing more than protecting the status quo.

Siraya ruling step in right direction

The Liberty Times Editorial

The Constitutional Court has ruled that parts of the Status Act for Indigenous Peoples (原住民身分法) are unconstitutional. According to the ruling, the act has failed to protect the right to personal identity and conserve indigenous cultures; hence, it must be amended within the next three years or a special law must be stipulated.

While the ruling has not solved the recognition and rights issue of the Siraya indigenous community, it is a major achievement for indigenous peoples in name rectification and official recognition.

Memorial insensitive to history

Huang Hui-chun 黃惠君

The Jing-Mei White Terror Memorial Park recently announced that extension and repair work on the National Human Rights Museum (國家人權博物館) would end, while the entrance signs completed in 2006 by former Council for Cultural Affairs chairman Chiu Kun-liang (邱坤良), and the monument with victims’ names added during the term of former minister of culture Lung Ying-tai (龍應台), are to be removed. This is because the offices of the former Taiwan High Prosecutors’ Office are to be restored. I was stunned to hear this.

Since when is a government bureau more valuable than entrance signs that symbolize the clash that resulted from the martial law system, and more important than a memorial inscribed with victims’ names?

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