Taiwan Solidarity Union Legislator Lin Shih-chia (林世嘉) yesterday said she would propose officially inviting Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama to deliver a speech at the Legislative Yuan.
“To show that we’re in solidarity with the Tibetans in their quest for freedom, I will make a proposal to formally invite the Dalai Lama to deliver a speech at our legislature,” Lin said during a question-and-answer session after the Tibetan government-in-exile’s Minister for Information and International Relations Dicki Chhoyang made a presentation at the Legislative Yuan on the exiled government, its policies and issues facing Tibetans inside and outside Tibet.
The event was co-hosted by Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) and the Tibetan Religious Foundation of His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
Lin’s proposal triggered a round of applause from the audience.
She said she would begin to collect signatures from fellow legislators and hopefully submit the proposal during a plenary session in the next legislative session.
Dicki Chhoyang is in Taiwan on her first stop of a tour to exiled Tibetan communities. Her tour will also include stops in South Korea and Japan.
In her speech, the Tibetan minister stressed that the government-in-exile would stand firmly behind the principles of non-violence and the middle-way approach in solving the Tibet issue.
Dicki Chhoyang also criticized the Chinese government for what she said was Beijing laying blame on the Dalai Lama and the government-in-exile for anti-Chinese sentiment and interethnic conflict in China.
“It [the conflicts] is often rooted in misguided, not well-structured, policies,” she said. “First, the patriotic re-education campaigns imposed on monasteries, resettlement of nomads and the language policy.”
Dicki Chhoyang said that in its propaganda campaigns, the Chinese government stations troops in monasteries and asks monks to denounce the Dalai Lama, while trying to destroy the centuries-old way of life of Tibetan nomads by forcing them to resettle in collective communities.
On language policy, the Chinese government has made Mandarin the medium of instruction in schools and only offers a few hours of Tibetan-language classes — taught in Chinese — per week, she added.
“A lot of Chinese in mainland [sic] China have no access to information other than what’s been given by the government,” Dicki Chhoyang said. “We really would like to request Chinese communities in free societies to deliver the accurate information.”
Hsiao said that while both Taiwan and Tibet are facing threats from China, “the suffering of Tibetans is much more serious than the Taiwanese.”
“It saddens me to see Tibetans trying to speak out through extreme actions, such as self-immolation, because they cannot take it anymore,” Hsiao said.
“We should all show more concern to human rights conditions in Tibet,” Hsiao said.
A drunk woman was sexually assaulted inside a crowded concourse of Taipei Railway Station on Thursday last week before a foreign tourist notified police, leading to calls for better education on bystander intervention and review of security infrastructure. The man, surnamed Chiu (邱), was taken into custody on charges of sexual assault, taking advantage of the woman’s condition and public indecency. Police discovered that Chiu was a fugitive with prior convictions for vehicle theft. He has been taken into custody and is to complete his unserved six-month sentence, police said. On Thursday last week, Chiu was seen wearing a white
EVA Airways, one of the leading international carriers in Taiwan, yesterday said that it was investigating reports that a cabin crew manager had ignored the condition of a sick flight attendant, who died on Saturday. The airline made the statement in response to a post circulating on social media that said that the flight attendant on an outbound flight was feeling sick and notified the cabin crew manager. Although the flight attendant grew increasingly ill on the return flight, the manager did not contact Medlink — a system that connects the aircraft to doctors on the ground for treatment advice during medical
The Taoyuan Flight Attendants’ Union yesterday vowed to protest at the EVA Air Marathon on Sunday next week should EVA Airway Corp’s management continue to ignore the union’s petition to change rules on employees’ leave of absence system, after a flight attendant reportedly died after working on a long-haul flight while ill. The case has generated public discussion over whether taking personal or sick leave should affect a worker’s performance review. Several union members yesterday protested at the Legislative Yuan, holding white flowers and placards, while shouting: “Life is priceless; requesting leave is not a crime.” “The union is scheduled to meet with
‘UNITED FRONT’ RHETORIC: China’s TAO also plans to hold weekly, instead of biweekly, news conferences because it wants to control the cross-strait discourse, an expert said China’s plan to expand its single-entry visa-on-arrival service to Taiwanese would be of limited interest to Taiwanese and is a feeble attempt by Chinese administrators to demonstrate that they are doing something, the Mainland Affairs Council said yesterday. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) spokesman Chen Binhua (陳斌華) said the program aims to facilitate travel to China for Taiwanese compatriots, regardless of whether they are arriving via direct flights or are entering mainland China through Hong Kong, Macau or other countries, and they would be able to apply for a single-entry visa-on-arrival at all eligible entry points in China. The policy aims
RSS