A delegation of local human rights experts and academics met with senior executives of major international human rights organizations based in Geneva Monday.
The two sides remained low-key about their meeting and agreed not to disclose the contents of their 90-minute talk.
Lee Yung-chih (李永熾), who heads the preparatory office of the national human rights memorial hall, told reporters that the sides had exchanged views on a range of human rights issues of mutual concern.
"The meeting lasted longer than scheduled because we became passionately involved in a wide range of topics," Lee said, adding that the meeting proceeded in an amicable atmosphere.
The delegation arrived in Geneva on the fourth and last leg of its current European tour aimed at collecting first-hand information about the latest world trends in human-rights development and promotion.
The group had already visited major human-rights museums in the Netherlands, Belgium and France before coming to Geneva.
Deputy Secretary-General to the President Chen Che-nan (陳哲男), the honorary leader of the delegation, said education is the main purpose of the government's plan to set up a national human rights memorial hall.
"We are hopeful that the memorial hall will teach the younger generation the meaning and importance of human rights," Chen said, adding that the project is part of the government's efforts to prevent a recurrence of the 228 Incident.
The proposed memorial hall will be located in the National Institute of Education Resources and Research in the Nanhai Garden near the Presidential Office in Taipei.
Chen said that the Presidential Office has earmarked a budget of NT$200 million for the project and that the memorial hall will be inaugurated before the presidential election next March.
The new hall will exhibit documents on major international human rights events, the 228 Incident, the White Terror of the 1950s, indigenous people's rights, educational and cultural development, and labor rights, Chen noted.
On Monday, the delegation also visited Taiwan's representative office in Geneva as well as its mission to the WTO. It was to wrap up its European tour yesterday.
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:
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