A priest in China's non-government controlled Catholic church has been abducted and detained by authorities, three months after the head of his diocese was taken away, a US-based monitoring group said yesterday.
Father Zhao Kexun was "forcibly abducted" by Chinese government security agents in Xuanhua, a district in the northern province of Hebei, after a service at a private house on Wednesday, according to the Cardinal Kung Foundation.
Zhao, an administrator for the Xuanhua diocese, was returning to his home 8km away when he was taken, the group said in a statement. A woman with him also was detained but was released shortly after, it added.
It said the whereabouts of Zhao, 75, were unknown.
The priest's detention comes after Bishop Zhao Zhendong, 83, was arrested in December, the foundation said. It did not give any other details.
A man who answered the telephone at the Xuanhua public security bureau said he was "unclear" about the situation. He would give only his surname, Guo.
China cut off ties with the Vatican shortly after the officially atheistic Communist Party took power in 1949, and relations between them remain strained.
Worship is allowed only in government-controlled churches, though millions of Catholics belong to unofficial congregations loyal to Rome. The government's Catholic church claims 4 million believers, but the Cardinal Kung Foundation says the unofficial church has 12 million followers.
Many unofficial congregations hold services openly, but in some regions, particularly the politically sensitive capital of Beijing, they are routinely harassed and their leaders arrested.
According to the foundation's statement, 33 members of seven dioceses have been arrested and imprisoned in Hebei alone, with many others in the same situation in other provinces.
"This is indisputable evidence of the Chinese government's systematic effort in an attempt to crush and eradicate the Roman Catholic Church in China," it said, citing Joseph Kung, the foundation's president. "The Chinese government keeps contradicting itself by stating that its constitution guarantees religious freedom. ... The facts certainly do not speak for the words."
EUROPEAN TARGETS: The planned Munich center would support TSMC’s European customers to design high-performance, energy-efficient chips, an executive said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday said that it plans to launch a new research-and-development (R&D) center in Munich, Germany, next quarter to assist customers with chip design. TSMC Europe president Paul de Bot made the announcement during a technology symposium in Amsterdam on Tuesday, the chipmaker said. The new Munich center would be the firm’s first chip designing center in Europe, it said. The chipmaker has set up a major R&D center at its base of operations in Hsinchu and plans to create a new one in the US to provide services for major US customers,
RESILIENCE: Deepening bilateral cooperation would extend the peace sustained over the 45 years since the Taiwan Relations Act, Greene said Taiwan-US relations are built on deep economic ties and shared values, American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) Director Raymond Greene said yesterday, adding that strengthening supply chain security in critical industries, enhancing societal resilience through cooperation and deepening partnerships are key to ensuring peace and stability for Taiwan in the years ahead. Greene made the remarks at the National Security Youth Forum, organized by National Taiwan University’s National Security and Strategy Studies Institution in Taipei. In his address in Mandarin Chinese, Greene said the Taiwan-US relationship is built on deep economic ties and shared interests, and grows stronger through the enduring friendship between
GAINING STEAM: The scheme initially failed to gather much attention, with only 188 cards issued in its first year, but gained popularity amid the COVID-19 pandemic Applications for the Employment Gold Card have increased in the past few years, with the card having been issued to a total of 13,191 people from 101 countries since its introduction in 2018, the National Development Council (NDC) said yesterday. Those who have received the card have included celebrities, such as former NBA star Dwight Howard and Australian-South Korean cheerleader Dahye Lee, the NDC said. The four-in-one Employment Gold Card combines a work permit, resident visa, Alien Resident Certificate (ARC) and re-entry permit. It was first introduced in February 2018 through the Act Governing Recruitment and Employment of Foreign Professionals (外國專業人才延攬及雇用法),
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday said that it would redesign the written portion of the driver’s license exam to make it more rigorous. “We hope that the exam can assess drivers’ understanding of traffic rules, particularly those who take the driver’s license test for the first time. In the past, drivers only needed to cram a book of test questions to pass the written exam,” Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Shih-kai (陳世凱) told a news conference at the Taoyuan Motor Vehicle Office. “In the future, they would not be able to pass the test unless they study traffic regulations