Minister of Culture Lung Ying-tai (龍應台) yesterday declined to make a public statement on the Tiananmen Square Massacre, saying that to do so would affect negotiations between Taiwan and China on cultural issues.
At the legislature’s Education and Culture Committee session, Lung was asked by several Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers about her views on the bloody crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing on the night of June 4-June 5, 1989.
“My views regarding the June Fourth Incident as a writer have been expressed in my books,” said Lung, a former essayist and cultural critic known for her writings on both Taiwan’s and China’s systems of government.
Photo: CNA
Lung said she “has the task” of negotiating cultural issues with China under the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) that was signed in June 2010.
Lung was responding to a question put to her by DPP Legislator Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) on whether she would attend a concert held in Taipei last night to commemorate the 23rd anniversary of the massacre.
“If I brought my personal views into cross-strait negotiations, I believe Taiwanese would be disappointed,” Lung said.
Lung told the press during a break that she would withhold her views on the incident in the interests of Taiwan’s publishing, film and TV industries.
In response to DPP Legislator Cheng Li-chiun’s (鄭麗君) call for her to express her views on the incident, Lung said a decisionmaker, unlike a writer, needs to show prudence as well as courage.
She said her personal views could be found in an article she wrote on the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Incident, titled “Who is not a Tiananmen mother? Dedicated to Ding Zilin.”
In the article, Lung described the massacre as an “open and festering wound on the body of a giant.”
“Until the wound is healed, the giant’s health will be a sham and the great future it is rushing toward will not be truly great,” she wrote.
She said in the article the massacre represented the “barbaric nature of power, the loss of reason and the fall of humanity.”
“Until the day it is rehabilitated, it will be carved on the forehead of the Beijing government,” she wrote.
The Chinese government put the official number of deaths in the incident at 23.
However, the international media and other sources estimate that between 800 and 3,000 people lost their lives after troops and tanks fired on the hundreds of thousands of protesters in the Chinese capital.
“China is preparing to invade Taiwan,” Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Francois Wu (吳志中) said in an exclusive interview with British media channel Sky News for a special report titled, “Is Taiwan ready for a Chinese invasion?” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said today in a statement. The 25-minute-long special report by Helen Ann-Smith released yesterday saw Sky News travel to Penghu, Taoyuan and Taipei to discuss the possibility of a Chinese invasion and how Taiwan is preparing for an attack. The film observed emergency response drills, interviewed baseball fans at the Taipei Dome on their views of US President
ECONOMIC BENEFITS: The imports from Belize would replace those from Honduras, whose shrimp exports have dropped 67 percent since cutting ties in 2023 Maintaining ties with Taiwan has economic benefits, Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials said yesterday, citing the approval of frozen whiteleg shrimp imports from Belize by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as an example. The FDA on Wednesday approved the tariff-free imports from Belize after the whiteleg shrimp passed the Systematic Inspection of Imported Food, which would continue to boost mutual trade, the ministry said. Taiwan’s annual consumption of whiteleg shrimps stands at 30,000 tonnes, far exceeding domestic production, the ministry said. Taiwan used to fill the gap by importing shrimps from Honduras, but purchases slumped after Tegucigalpa severed diplomatic ties with Taiwan
The Executive Yuan yesterday approved a southwestern extension of the Sanying MRT Line from New Taipei to Bade District (八德) in Taoyuan, with a goal of starting construction by late 2026. The 4.03-kilometer extension, featuring three new stations, will run from the current terminus at Yingtao Fude Station (LB12) in New Taipei City to Dannan Station (LB14), where it will connect with Taoyuan’s Green Line, New Taipei City Metro Corp said in a statement. This extension will follow the completion of core Sanying Line, a 14.29-kilometer medium-capacity system linking Tucheng (土城), Sansia (三峽)
CARGO LOSS: About 50 containers at the stern of the ‘Ever Lunar’ cargo ship went overboard, prompting the temporary closure of the port and disrupting operations Evergreen Marine Corp, Taiwan’s largest container shipper, yesterday said that all crew members aboard the Ever Lunar (長月) were safe after dozens of containers fell overboard off the coast of Peru the previous day. The incident occurred at 9:40am on Friday as the Ever Lunar was anchored and waiting to enter the Port of Callao when it suddenly experienced severe rolling, Evergreen said in a statement. The rolling, which caused the containers to fall, might have been caused by factors including a tsunami triggered by an earthquake in Russia, poor winter sea conditions in South America or a sudden influx of waves,
RSS