Deputy Legislative Speaker Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday came under fire over scornful remarks she made about long-time human rights activist Peter Huang (黃文雄), who received an Alumni Excellence Award from National Chengchi University earlier this month.
Huang was a key figure in an assassination attempt on Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國), son of dictator Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), in New York in 1970, when Taiwan was ruled by an authoritarian KMT regime.
“Why was a [would-be] assassin who tried to kill former president Chiang given an excellent alumni award? Was there any reason to justify [the attempted] killing? I have two sisters graduating from National Chengchi University and they are more excellent than [Huang] because they at least are not killers,” Hung said in a speech at a forum organized by the university to discuss issues related to Chinese students studying in Taiwan.
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Kuan Bi-ling (管碧玲) said Hung’s comments were “inappropriate.”
“Since Hung is a deputy speaker of the legislature, she should shed her personal ideological beliefs when commenting on history. It was also inappropriate for her to intervene in university affairs. Universities should be kept independent of political influence,” Kuan said.
“It seems that Hung still lives in the Martial Law era,” National Chengchi University sociology professor Ku Chung-hwa (顧忠華) said. “She has to let her brain evolve to be more receptive to universal values and democratic ideas, rather than sticking to the interpretation of history advocated by the KMT.”
In the face of authoritarianism, it was the courage of those brave enough to take revolutionary measures against tyrants that brought democracy to their countries, Ku said, citing former South African president Nelson Mandela as an example.
Huang returned to Taiwan in 1996, after being forced into exile for 25 years. He was the last of a large group of blacklisted political dissidents denied entry to the country. He has since dedicated himself to human rights activism.
Huang yesterday said he was not surprised by Hung’s remarks because people have different views in a democracy.
Reciting the third paragraph of the Preamble of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights — “Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law” — Huang said his actions in 1970 were based on this belief.
Later yesterday, Hung said her comments on the case were meant to arouse discussion about “whether education should encourage violence.”
NO RECIPROCITY: Taipei has called for cross-strait group travel to resume fully, but Beijing is only allowing people from its Fujian Province to travel to Matsu, the MAC said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday criticized an announcement by the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism that it would lift a travel ban to Taiwan only for residents of China’s Fujian Province, saying that the policy does not meet the principles of reciprocity and openness. Chinese Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism Rao Quan (饒權) yesterday morning told a delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers in a meeting in Beijing that the ministry would first allow Fujian residents to visit Lienchiang County (Matsu), adding that they would be able to travel to Taiwan proper directly once express ferry
FAST RELEASE: The council lauded the developer for completing model testing in only four days and releasing a commercial version for use by academia and industry The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) yesterday released the latest artificial intelligence (AI) language model in traditional Chinese embedded with Taiwanese cultural values. The council launched the Trustworthy AI Dialogue Engine (TAIDE) program in April last year to develop and train traditional Chinese-language models based on LLaMA, the open-source AI language model released by Meta. The program aims to tackle the information bias that is often present in international large-scale language models and take Taiwanese culture and values into consideration, it said. Llama 3-TAIDE-LX-8B-Chat-Alpha1, released yesterday, is the latest large language model in traditional Chinese. It was trained based on Meta’s Llama-3-8B
STUMPED: KMT and TPP lawmakers approved a resolution to suspend the rate hike, which the government said was unavoidable in view of rising global energy costs The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday said it has a mandate to raise electricity prices as planned after the legislature passed a non-binding resolution along partisan lines to freeze rates. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers proposed the resolution to suspend the price hike, which passed by a 59-50 vote. The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) voted with the KMT. Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT said the resolution is a mandate for the “immediate suspension of electricity price hikes” and for the Executive Yuan to review its energy policy and propose supplementary measures. A government-organized electricity price evaluation board in March
NOVEL METHODS: The PLA has adopted new approaches and recently conducted three combat readiness drills at night which included aircraft and ships, an official said Taiwan is monitoring China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) exercises for changes in their size or pattern as the nation prepares for president-elect William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) said yesterday. Tsai made the comment at a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, in response to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wang Ting-yu’s (王定宇) questions. China continues to employ a carrot-and-stick approach, in which it applies pressure with “gray zone” tactics, while attempting to entice Taiwanese with perks, Tsai said. These actions aim to help Beijing look like it has