The magazine Neo Formosa Weekly (蓬萊島雜誌) resumed publication in electronic form yesterday with the aim of revitalizing the push for an independent republic.
Founded by Huang Tien-fu (黃天福) in 1984, Neo Formosa Weekly published 52 issues, 51 of which were banned. Former president of the magazine Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), former editor-in-chief Lee Yi-yang (李逸洋) and Huang were imprisoned for publishing an article that said former New Party lawmaker Elmer Feng’s (馮滬祥) doctoral dissertation was plagiarized.
Feng filed libel charges against the magazine. While Chen’s appeal against the conviction was pending, he left his post as a Taipei City councilor and returned to his home county of Tainan to run for county commissioner. Chen lost the election by a handful of votes and his supporters alleged that the vote had been rigged by the electoral authorities.
PHOTO: CNA
The magazine’s president, Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁), a former deputy secretary-general at the Presidential Office, said yesterday the goal of the magazine was clear — to protect Taiwan’s sovereignty and to build a new, independent republic.
Describing this year as full of misery, Chen Chi-mai said Taiwan had not only suffered the deadliest flooding in 50 years, but had also seen damage to its sovereignty, democracy and human rights since the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) returned to power.
“The corruption cases brought against former president Chen [Shui-bian] are a perfect example of political interference in legal cases,” he said.
While the dangwai (黨外,“outside the KMT”) opposition movement of the 1980s sought to strive for freedom of speech and the freedom to form political parties, Chen Chi-mai said it was necessary to restore the “dangwai spirit” and consolidate public opinion. The magazine’s old office in Kaohsiung has been chosen as the headquarters and Chen Chi-mai said it also hoped to establish branch offices elsewhere.
Magazine editor-in-chief Wang Ding-yu (王定宇), a Tainan City councilor, said the magazine was a communication platform and a tool to organize opposition forces.
“We may be small, but we will not easily back down if the administration continues to ignore the public opinion,” he said.
Huang said the then-KMT administration of the 1980s imposed severe punishments on Neo Formosa Weekly, sentencing the publication’s managers to jail and slapping a NT$2 million fine on the cash-strapped magazine.
“We later learned from declassified documents that the KMT government planned to wipe out the publication,” he said.
Things are different now, he said, but the aim of the magazine would remain the same — to protect Taiwan-centered consciousness and report on the erroneous, unfair and unjust.
Those interested in contributing articles or photographs can find out more information on the Web at www.formosanews.tw.
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