Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) yesterday called on the nation's women's groups to be wary of Chinese "united front" tactics following recent requests for data from their Chinese counterparts.
Lu was referring to requests recently faxed to the women's groups from the National Chinese Women's United Association asking for information or photos documenting their participation in the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women, which was held in Beijing.
The association said the information would be used for an exhibition it is planning for later this year to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the 1995 conference.
Lu had asked the Ministry of the Interior's Department of Social Affairs to scrutinize the event so that local women's groups would not, in submitting any information, "unknowingly be included as China's women's groups."
The ministry subsequently issued letters to women's groups suggesting that "it is inappropriate" to send information to the association.
DPU meeting
In other news, Lu will today address participants at the Asia-Pacific regional meeting of the Democratic Pacific Union (DPU) in Tokyo via teleconference.
The DPU is Lu's brainchild and aims to serve as a platform for personnel and resource exchanges around the Pacific Rim.
Today's meeting, jointly organized by the Taiwan-based DPU Coordinating Office and the Japan-Taiwan Parliamentary Amity Association, is expected to be attended by more than 100 lawmakers and representatives from Taiwan, South Korea, the Philippines, New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia and Malaysia.
Chaired by Lu and Takeo Hiranuma, head of a pro-Taiwan parliamentary group in the Japanese Diet, the meeting will focus on "Asian civilization" and technological developments.
Lu had previously said that she would address the meeting via teleconference instead of traveling to Japan in person in order not to place undue pressure on the Japanese government.
The DPU will be formally established in Taipei on Aug. 14, which will coincide with the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II.
Members of the political and academic spheres as well as representatives of civic groups from more than 20 countries will attend the organization's inauguration, Lu 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