President Chen Shui-bian (
"Mr. Soyinka is not only a poet, dramatist, novelist, commentator and scholar, but also a freedom fighter for the African people, a political leader, and, moreover, a human-rights defender," Chen said. "We must follow his perseverance and fearlessness."
Chen, speaking at the Presidential Office, said he admires the courage of the winner of the 1986 Nobel Prize in literature, who was invited to attend the 2003 Taipei International Book Exhibition.
"The book exhibition is glorious not because it is the greatest one in its history but because of Mr. Soyinka's attendence," Chen said.
He said he has experiences similar to Soyinka's, noting that when the writer won the Nobel Prize in 1986, he was jailed by his government, who cooked up charges against his pursuit of freedom of speech.
"The age of 31 was also significant for both of us," Chen said.
"At that age, I formally started my political career after being elected as a Taipei City councilor," he said. "At the same age, Mr. Soyinka was arrested in 1965 because he bravely broke into a radio station and put a gun toward the head of the broadcaster to demand he announce the real result of an election."
The broadcaster had been told to announce a phony victory for the ruling party, Chen said, but Soyinka paid for his moral courage by being detained.
"From 1967 to 1969, Soyinka was jailed as a political prisoner. But in his cell, Soyinka completed his Poems from Prison on tissue paper and cartons that later won him the Nobel Prize," he said.
Chen said that many people who don't know Taiwan well always think that the cross-strait relationship is dangerous and that the country is on the verge of war, but the arrival of Soyinka will show how strong the nation's feelings are about freedom.
Soyinka said that he was impressed by Taiwan's achievements and did not feel the cross-strait situation to be as tense as he had imagined it would be.
Soyinka said that he feels something special every time he meets those who have "graduated from prison university," adding that he admires Chen's efforts to fight for democracy.
"Both Taiwan and Nigeria opposed the dictator and endeavored to get freedom and enjoy the freedom now," Soyinka said.
He said Taiwan now shows pluralism in many aspects.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods