The tables turned on the Ministry of Education yesterday when a group of National Taiwan University (NTU) alumni demanded the ministry either move out of its current office building, which they claim belongs to the school, or cough up NT$2 billion (US$61 million) in rent for occupying the building for the last 36 years.
The ministry responded that the property belongs to the government and therefore the school has no say in how the property should be used.
"The ministry said it is going after the Chinese Nationalist Party's [KMT] illegal assets out of a sense of justice. But it is an irony that the ministry has refused to return the building that is rightfully ours," said Song Shun-lian (
The 7,776m2 building next to the National Taiwan University Hospital and the Legislative Yuan building on Zhongshan S Road, was erected 36 years ago by the university's School of Pharmacy in the College of Medicine.
In 1971, Sun Yun-shou (
The alumni association said that the ministry was supposed to return the building nine years ago.
The ministry reportedly not only refused to honor the deal in July, but demanded unlimited use of the building, claiming that the government has sole control over any public buildings.
Liu Yi-chuan (
Another possible solution was for the ministry to find a new location.
Liu said the ministry was simply following the counsel of the government that ownership and management rights over any publicly owned building must belong to the same entity.
"It does not make sense to have NTU own the building while we manage it," he said.
"It would be in contradiction to the government's recommendations," Liu said.
Song said the alumni ssociation understood there was only a slim possibility that the ministry would back down from a fight.
"We just hope the ministry will stop ignoring the association's invitation to hold an open debate on issue," she 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