Premier Yu Shyi-kun yesterday dismissed media reports that he opposed a draft bill designed to give local languages an equal footing.
"I'm not against enacting such a law. I just don't think the legislation is feasible because it'd be very hard to write official documents in 14 different languages," he said.
The Mandarin Promotion Council under the Ministry of Education recently has approved the draft bill of the language equality law (
The proposed law would prohibit discrimination against court testimonies given in local languages -- Hoklo, Hakka and a dozen Aboriginal languages.
It would also require courts to provide translations in such situations. The rules would also apply to the legislature and the Cabinet.
Accenting that he unequivocally supports the idea that all men are created equal, Yu said that all languages should be treated equally.
"As the Constitution guarantees the equality of all peoples, it should apply to all cultures and languages," he said.
Yu made the remarks during a press conference held at the Executive Yuan yesterday afternoon in the run-up to the new legislative session, which is slated for today.
Yu is scheduled to deliver a speech on the legislative floor about government initiatives planned for this year and answer questions from lawmakers across party lines.
When asked whether the government will take any concrete measures to protect the nation's sovereignty over the disputed Tiaoyutai Islands, Yu said that it is important for Taiwan, Japan and China sit down to talk and iron out their differences.
"We'd like to see a three-win situation here where all three countries are jointly involved and share the resources in disputed waters," Yu said.
A group of academics and politicians, including Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (
They proposed the Cabinet take the initiative and claim the 370km exclusive economic zones as a bargaining chip on the negotiation table.
The disputed fishing zone in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea is in an area which Taiwan, Japan and China each claim to be within their 370km exclusive economic zones.
Under normal circumstances, the three countries would have to engage in trilateral negotiations to resolve their overlapping claims. Japan and China, however, have negotiated a bilateral fishing pact, leaving Taiwan out in the cold.
Recently Japan has been aggressively expelling Taiwanese fishing boats from what Tokyo calls its economic waters in that area.
Regarding when the government will allow direct transportation links with China, Yu said that it will not happen until both sides sit down and negotiate.
"We're ready to talk at the negotiation table at any time, any place and to talk about any subject," he said.
Yu, however, reiterated that direct transportation links with China is not an elixir for the nation's flagging economy.
"It needs to be well thought-out since some industries may benefit from it, while others may suffer a deadly blow," he said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching