The Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday reiterated its unwavering stance on the issue of “comfort women,” after Japan expressed “extreme disappointment” over the installation of Taiwan’s first bronze statue honoring comfort women in Tainan.
“The government has always paid close attention to the issue of comfort women. Our stance on the matter, as well as our policy to fight for their dignity, remains unchanged,” ministry spokesman Andrew Lee (李憲章) said in a news release, adding that negotiations with Japan on the matter would continue.
The government did not play a part in the erection of the statue by a civic group in Tainan on Tuesday to mark International Comfort Women Day, Lee added.
Photo courtesy of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Tainan mayoral candidate Kao Su-po
The ministry’s remarks came just hours after Japan Broadcasting Corp (NHK) reported that Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga lamented the statue’s installation during a news conference after a Cabinet meeting in Japan.
“The establishment and exhibition of comfort women statues in various parts of the world is extremely disappointing, as it is not compatible with the position and efforts of the Japanese government so far,” Suga was quoted by the NHK as saying.
The statue in Tainan, which stands on an open space next to the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) Tainan chapter office, was erected by the non-profit Tainan Association for Comfort Women’s Rights, with assistance from the KMT.
Some Japanese media have speculated that the move was motivated by Taiwan’s nine-in-one elections in November, and was part of the KMT’s efforts to criticize the generally friendly stance of the Democratic Progressive Party administration toward Japan.
The Taipei Women’s Rescue Foundation estimates that about 2,000 Taiwanese women were forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II.
The Asian Women’s Fund — a quasi-public organization established by the Japanese government in 1995 to address the issue through “atonement” projects, before dissolving it in 2007 — had tried to offer Taiwanese victims compensation of ￥2 million (US$18,014 at the current exchange rate) per person and a letter of apology.
However, some Taiwanese victims refused to accept the money as they felt it did not show that the Japanese government was taking responsibility for their actions.
The Japan-Taiwan Exchange Association in Taipei yesterday declined to comment on the matter, saying only that the Japanese government had tried to address the issue through various measures taken by the Asian Women’s Fund.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest foundry service provider, yesterday said that global semiconductor revenue is projected to hit US$1.5 trillion in 2030, after the figure exceeds US$1 trillion this year, as artificial intelligence (AI) demand boosts consumption of token and compute power. “We are still at the beginning of the AI revolution, but we already see a significant impact across the whole semiconductor ecosystem,” TSMC deputy cochief operating officer Kevin Zhang (張曉強) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “It is fair to say that in the past decade, smartphones and other mobile devices were
RSS