Local activists and members of an international civil movement aimed at promoting peace yesterday called on the Taliban to release the remaining South Koreans it is holding hostage. They also urged South Korea and other countries to withdraw from Afghanistan.
Leaders of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and members of the Taipei branch of the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC) made the appeal at a press conference held at the legislature.
Chien Hsi-chieh, the executive director of the Peacetime Foundation of Taiwan said the Taliban had violated the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War and it should release the hostages immediately.
Two hostages among a church group of 23 South Koreans on a relief mission in Afghanistan were killed by the Taliban after they were abducted on July 19. The militants yesterday set tomorrow as a new deadline to save the remaining 21 hostages.
"The treatment of the hostages is simply not tolerable, and Taiwan, as a member of the international community, has to voice its concern about the matter," Chien said.
Wang Shu-li (王淑麗), director of the international affairs department at the National Union of Taiwan Women Association, urged the US and its allies to rexamine their plans to combat terrorism.
"Ever since the Sept. 11 attacks, their counterterrorism plans have not only made the public in other countries live in a state of war for years, but have also made their own nationals feel unsafe in their daily lives," Wang said.
Whether the nature of the fight against terrorism has become a war of encroachment is a problem worthy of consideration, said Fan Ching-wen (
The activists also called on the Afghan government to ensure the safety of the remaining 21 hostages in its rescue plan, saying that they should not "fight evil with evil."
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