A man who was jailed for staging a bombing campaign in protest at rice imports has launched a hunger strike demanding that the government resist US pressure at this week's WTO meeting in Hong Kong, activists said yesterday.
Yang Ju-men (
"I asked him why he is doing this and he said it is to show his determination" to underscore the plight of local farmers resulting from the dumping of foreign rice, social activist Yang Tsu-chun (
PHOTO: CHENG TSE-MING, TAIPEI TIMES
Several activist groups rallied behind Yang, who was nicknamed the "rice bomber" for his trademark of sprinkling rice on the homemade explosives, none of which caused any injuries.
Yang, who has appealed against the sentence, says he aimed to highlight the plight of local farmers after the nation's accession to the WTO in 2002.
Peng Ming-hui (彭明輝), a professor of National Tsinghua University, said few young people would become rice farmers if the domestic price remains low.
"If the policy persists, and after the farmers, notably the aged population, retire in 10 years, Taiwan's agricultural sector will be wiped out," Peng said.
The government has slashed its subsidies to farmers, conditionally opened up to rice imports and cut tariffs on agricultural items to fulfil its obligations as a WTO member.
On the eve of the WTO talks, the US stepped up pressure on Taipei to further open its market to agricultural imports.
"We are also disappointed that Taiwan has allied itself with the G-10 [countries in] the WTO, a group that actively opposes market-access liberalization in agriculture," Scott Sindelar, chief of the agricultural affairs section of the American Institute in Taiwan, told reporters.
Taiwan rejected the charge.
"We're not opposed to liberalization in agriculture in the new round of WTO talks. Instead we feel liberalization should be done in a step-by-step manner," Rose Hsiao, chief of the Council of Agriculture's Department of International Affairs, told reporters.
"If not, and the tariffs on agricultural products are reduced dramatically as the US demands, then it would bring disaster to Taiwan's farming industry," she said.
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