Taiwan should suspend all religious exchanges with China before Beijing stops its oppression on Tibetan monks, the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) said yesterday.
TSU legislative caucus whip Hsu Chung-hsin (許忠信) said China’s recent crackdown on Tibetan monks has been one of the most brutal cases of persecution in history, which has resulted in at least 20 monks dying from 30 cases of self-immolation since March last year.
The TSU would propose to observe a moment of silence before the next legislative session to pay tribute to those monks who perished, Hsu said.
President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration should recognize the gravity of the oppression and suspend all religious exchanges across the Taiwan Strait until Beijing stops its violent actions, Hsu said.
TSU Legislator Huang Wen-ling (黃文玲) said China is an atheist country and that it oppresses all religions, including Christianity and Catholicism.
The most recent crackdown in Tibet began in 2008, when China tightened its control over the region before the Beijing Summer Olympics by deploying its troops there and enforcing “patriotism education,” TSU Legislator Lin Shih-chia (林世嘉) said.
The Tibetan issue goes beyond religion as it is also related to human rights and ethnicity, Lin said.
“Engaging in religious exchanges with a country like China would amount to self-belittlement for Taiwan,” Lin said.
The Democratic Progressive Party expressed similar concerns on Feb. 21 over the situation in Tibet amid an intensifying crackdown by Chinese authorities and called on Ma to voice his concerns to Beijing.
Taipei on Thursday held urban resilience air raid drills, with residents in one of the exercises’ three “key verification zones” reporting little to no difference compared with previous years, despite government pledges of stricter enforcement. Formerly known as the Wanan exercise, the air raid drills, which concluded yesterday, are now part of the “Urban Resilience Exercise,” which also incorporates the Minan disaster prevention and rescue exercise. In Taipei, the designated key verification zones — where the government said more stringent measures would be enforced — were Songshan (松山), Zhongshan (中山) and Zhongzheng (中正) districts. Air raid sirens sounded at 1:30pm, signaling the
The number of people who reported a same-sex spouse on their income tax increased 1.5-fold from 2020 to 2023, while the overall proportion of taxpayers reporting a spouse decreased by 4.4 percent from 2014 to 2023, Ministry of Finance data showed yesterday. The number of people reporting a spouse on their income tax trended upward from 2014 to 2019, the Department of Statistics said. However, the number decreased in 2020 and 2021, likely due to a drop in marriages during the COVID-19 pandemic and the income of some households falling below the taxable threshold, it said. The number of spousal tax filings rebounded
A saleswoman, surnamed Chen (陳), earlier this month was handed an 18-month prison term for embezzling more than 2,000 pairs of shoes while working at a department store in Tainan. The Tainan District Court convicted Chen of embezzlement in a ruling on July 7, sentencing her to prison for illegally profiting NT$7.32 million (US$248,929) at the expense of her employer. Chen was also given the opportunity to reach a financial settlement, but she declined. Chen was responsible for the sales counter of Nike shoes at Tainan’s Shinkong Mitsukoshi Zhongshan branch, where she had been employed since October 2019. She had previously worked
Labor rights groups yesterday called on the Ministry of Labor to protect migrant workers in Taiwan’s fishing industry, days after CNN reported alleged far-ranging abuses in the sector, including deaths and forced work. The ministry must enforce domestic labor protection laws on Taiwan-owned deep-sea fishing vessels, the Coalition for Human Rights for Migrant Fishers told a news conference outside the ministry in Taipei after presenting a petition to officials. CNN on Sunday reported that Taiwanese seafood giant FCF Co, the owners of the US-based Bumble Bee Foods, committed human rights abuses against migrant fishers, citing Indonesian migrant fishers. The alleged abuses included denying