A Japanese national who has lived in Taiwan for more than 15 years has started a fundraising campaign for a taxi driver allegedly attacked and beaten unconscious by half-Japanese actress Makiyo and a Japanese friend.
Naotsugu Yoshida, 34, who is a supervisor for the Hatta Yoichi Memorial Foundation for Culture and the Arts in Taiwan, said he felt ashamed about the incident and he hoped the money raised would help the injured driver and his family.
Yoshida said almost 200 Japanese expatriates in Taiwan have expressed their intention to donate to the fund and that he has raised about NT$100,000 so far.
He said he hopes to deliver the money to the driver in person.
Yoshida said many Japanese are angry about the incident and the attitude of the alleged offender, Takateru Tomoyori, because he has tried to defend his actions rather than apologize.
Tomoyori’s attempt in recent days to shoulder all the blame for Makiyo and two other women allegedly involved in the incident was also not a responsible way to handle the matter, Yoshida said.
Although the injured driver’s condition has improved, Yoshida said, Tomoyori and Makiyo should think about how to show sincere remorse and help with the driver’s medical care.
Asked about the media coverage since the incident on Feb. 2, Yoshida said the intense pursuit by the press helped reveal the truth about the alleged assault, adding that Makiyo and Tomoyori failed to provide honest accounts until the true nature of the attack was exposed.
Makiyo and Tomoyori were indicted on charges of “inflicting serious bodily harm” on the taxi driver by the Taipei District Prosecutors Office on Friday.
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