■ Diplomacy
Racist gaffe upsets allies
The government yesterday apologized for offending African diplomats, who were served soup in paper bowls decorated with a drawing of a black boy with a lion, giraffe and jellyfish. The diplomats were touring factories when they stopped at a seafood restaurant for lunch last week. The restaurant served them soup in the bowls, which depicted a smiling black boy waving a leaf surrounded by the animals. The officials walked out of restaurant, calling the drawing offensive. Ministry of Foreign Affairs Spokesman Michel Lu (呂慶龍) apologized for the incident, but added that the manufacturer of the bowls probably didn't mean to belittle anyone with the drawing. "Taiwanese have been friendly to foreigners, and no one tried to offend our friends deliberately," Lu said. The diplomats were from Swaziland, Malawi, Chad, Senegal and the Republic of Sao Tome and Principe.
■ Politics
Fingerprinting urged
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Tsai Huang-liang (蔡煌瑯) yesterday urged the Legislative Yuan not to review an amendment to the household registration law, saying that the requirement for citizens to be fingerprinted when claiming a new ID card should remain in place. Tsai made the remarks amid public concern about social order after two policemen were attacked from behind while patrolling the streets in Sijhih, Taipei County. One officer was killed and the other seriously injured. Under current law, citizens will be required to be fingerprinted when claiming the new version of the ID card which is set to be launched on July 1. The Executive Yuan recently proposed several revisions to the household registration law to remove the fingerprint requirement due to pressure from rights organizations.
■ Politics
Lien urged to criticize China
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Lien Chan (連戰) should speak for those whose basic human rights or religious freedoms have been oppressed by the Chinese government during his planned China visit, a Democratic Progressive Party legislative whip said yesterday. Chen Ching-jun (陳景峻) said at a news conference that 50.5 percent of the respondents in a just-released opinion poll voiced opposition to Lien's planned trip to meet with Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤), compared to 36.7 percent who gave a thumbs-up to Lien's travel plans. "The poll results indicate that more than half of the Taiwanese people don't support Lien's planned China visit, " Chen said, adding that if Lien insists on his travel plans in defiance of public opinion, he should be courageous enough to ask Chinese leaders to stop human rights abuses and cease suppression of Falun Gong and Catholic followers.
■ Politics
Ma puts Ishihara on ice
The Taipei City Government yesterday postponed an invitation to Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara to serve as spokesman for a Taipei travel journal's Japanese edition following a dispute over textbooks and a Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) visit to a contentious shrine, a city official said. Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) visited Tokyo last month and invited Ishihara to promote tourism in Taipei, the official said. However, the visit by TSU Chairman Shu Chin-chiang (蘇進強) to the Yasukuni Shrine on April 2 and Tokyo's decision three days later to approve a textbook glossing over its wartime atrocities led the city to postpone the plan. Two French artists have been asked to serve as spokesmen for the next issue of the magazine, the official said.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
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,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift