A Taiwanese doctor who performed his alternative military service in Burkina Faso is currently on a speaking tour on the US east coast to share his personal experiences while serving in the western African nation.
Lien Chia-en (
The son of a dentist and a devout Christian, Lien, 29, has been helping heal the sick and clean up the countryside in Burkina Faso since October 2001.
During his 20-month period of alternative service, he helped drill a well and build an orphanage, in addition to providing medical service in Burkina Faso.
Lien, who mounted a clothes-for-garbage drive to help the people and environment of Burkina Faso that has turned him into something of a legend on the Internet, began the drive by only trying to solicit the Taiwanese people for donations of unwanted clothes.
However, he has received over 1,500 bags of clothes from people around the world who learned of his drive on the Internet.
Many Taiwanese have responded to Lien's drive, which was launched by him and a Christian group in Burkina Faso to help rid the countryside of discarded plastic garbage bags that pose a danger to cattle and other animals. People who gather and hand in such plastic waste are handed a bundle of the donated clothes in return for their efforts.
Lien returned to Taiwan to marry and then returned to Burkina Faso with his new wife in March last year for another year. During their stay, he focused on an orphanage, hoping to teach the locals to run the orphanage smoothly without his presence.
Lien returned to Taiwan in March for a short break of 20 days, and then headed back to Burkina Faso. During his most recent stay in the country, he mainly focused on helping Taiwan's Public Television Service to shoot a documentary series based on his story, which is scheduled to air at the end of this year.
Before his departure from Burkina Faso in March, Lien also bought a piece of land on which to build an office, a soap factory, an AIDS counseling center and a library, turning them over to a local church for management.
Lien said he hopes that more young people will go to Burkina Faso for volunteer work.
As for himself, he said he has decided to start work at the Veterans General Hospital in Taiwan in August.
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