In what they described as an effort to ensure that the nation remembers the fatal attack by Philippine Coast Guard personnel on a Taiwanese fishing boat last week, several Greater Kaohsiung councilors from across party lines on Tuesday expressed their desire to purchase the bullet-riddled ship and put it on permanent display.
Greater Kaohsiung councilors Hung Ping-lang (洪平朗) and Chen Ming-tse (陳明澤) of the Democratic Progressive Party, as well as Lee Chang-sheng (李長生) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) offered to buy the Kuang Ta Hsing No. 28, registered in Pingtung County’s Liouciou Township (琉球), for NT$8 million (US$272,000).
They made the offer amid an escalating diplomatic row between Taipei and Manila over the shooting of 65-year-old Hung Shih-cheng (洪石成) on Thursday, when a joint patrol by the Philippine Coast Guard and the Philippine Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources opened fire on the Taiwanese boat while it operated in the overlapping economic zone of the two nations.
Photo: CNA
The incident has triggered indignation among many Taiwanese and prompted the government to impose punitive sanctions on the Philippines after Manila failed to satisfactorily respond to Taipei’s request for a formal apology and other demands by the 72-hour deadline by midnight on Tuesday.
“If the purchase is finalized, our initial plan is to have the boat set on a trailer to tour the nation before putting in on permanent display at a harbor in Kaohsiung’s Cieding District (茄萣) as an historic artifact,” Hung Ping-lang said.
Hung Ping-lang said that the councilors hoped to ensure that Taiwanese would never forget the aggression wrought by the Philippine Coast Guard personnel, and hoped it would unite Taiwanese in defending the nation against intruders and arouse their sense of nationalism.
The offer to purchase the boat is part of the trio’s efforts to support Hung Shih-cheng’s family through concrete actions, Chen said, adding that he hoped the move would not only encourage Taiwanese to reflect on the unfortunate incident, but also provide financial support to the victim’s family.
Chen added that the offered price of NT$8 million was calculated based on the reported value of the fishing boat.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching