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Taiwan Quick Take

■ Politics
Truth committee sought
A group of White Terror victims and their families yesterday urged the to-be-elected sixth legislature to establish a "post-war human rights violation truth investigation committee" so that the historical truth about the White Terror period could be told and victims' names cleared. The group, under the name of "Fifties White Terror Political Cases Redress Promotion Asso-ciation," said that most people have a very limited knowledge of the White Terror period. Association chairman Chen Peng-yun (陳鵬雲) said that, although the government has been making reparations to the victims and their families, the responsibility for the unfair verdicts the victims received has not been properly addressed, nor have their confiscated properties and good names been restored.

■ Environment
Sustainablity touted
An environmental group said that 66 legislators from across the political spec-trum, or 30 percent of all members of the Legislative Yuan, have signed a decla-ration committing them-selves to pursuing sus-tainable development to protect the environment.
The Taiwan Environmental Protection Union and a dozen other civic groups announced the legislators' names at a press conference yesterday. Union president Chen Chiao-hua (陳椒華) said that 37 legislators from the Democratic Progressive Party, 10 from the Taiwan Solidarity Union, nine from the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), one from the People First Party and nine independent legislators signed the declaration. She said that a certain political party questioned the union's motive in seeking the endorsement of legis-lators and refused to sign it. Chen stressed that the union's goal was to promote environmental protection.

■ Environment
Goodall plant trees
Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) joined British conservationist Jane Goodall at a tree-planting activity at the Taipei American School yesterday. Ma and Goodall planted four trees on the school's campus and the sidewalk outside the school. Ma told Goodall that the city government adopted a set of tree-protection regulations last year to preserve rare trees and trees of a certain height, age and circumference in the city. Ma said he hopes the Roots and Shoots program promoted by the Jane Good-all Institute will continue to expand in this country to educate students to protect the environment. There are already 415 Roots and Shoots groups in kindergartens, elementary schools, high schools, colleges and communities in Taiwan.

■ Business
Premier warns Japan
This nation is expected to become an important supplier in the global optoelectronics industrial chain within a few years with more government and private investment to establish new companies in industrial parks, Premier Yu Shyi-kun said in Yunlin yesterday. The optoelec-tronics manufacturing industry is the second "trillion star" industry -- after the semiconductor industry -- the government hopes to build, Yu said at a ground-breaking ceremony for the Yunlin division of the Central Taiwan Science Park. Once the development of the optoelectronics manufacturing industry is in full swing, hopefully in three to four years, the nation's optoelectronics industry will be able to surpass Japan's production levels, Yu said.

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