Amid rising tensions between Taiwan and the Philippines, rights advocacy groups yesterday urged the public to refrain from verbally or physically attacking Filipinos living in Taiwan.
“It’s not just Filipinos; all immigrants from Southeast Asia in the country would feel threatened when walking on the streets,” TransAsia Sisterhood Taiwan executive secretary Ly Vuoch-heang (李佩香), who is an immigrant from Cambodia, told a news conference in Taipei.
“I’ve not been attacked, because I’m from Cambodia, but I don’t feel comfortable when people keep asking me whether I’m from the Philippines when I’m just going to buy lunch,” she said.
Tensions between Taiwan and the Philippines have been on the rise since Philippine Coast Guard personnel on May 9 opened fire on a Taiwanese fishing boat, killing a fisherman, Hung Shih-cheng (洪石成).
While the two countries have not been successful in reaching an agreement in dealing with the aftermath, a seemingly anti-Philippine sentiment has been developing among the public in Taiwan. Some communities have held rallies saying that they do not welcome Filipinos, vendors in a market in Changhua County posted signs saying that they would not conduct business with Filipinos and, most recently, a Filipino migrant worker in Greater Tainan was attacked on Thursday by four people whose identities are not known.
“It’s not right to vent anger you may feel toward the Philippine government on Filipino migrant workers — when you even think about attacking these hard workers, please think of their contribution to Taiwan’s economy,” Taiwan International Workers’ Association policy researcher Chen Hsiu-lien (陳秀蓮) said.
Chen accused President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) of attempting to encourage people to vent their anger on Filipino workers as he has become a target of criticism for mishandling of the incident, “otherwise he would not have waited until now to ask people not to do so.”
Taiwan Committee for Philippine Concerns convener Hsia Hsiao-chuan (夏曉鵑) said that Philippine migrant workers are also victims of their own government.
“More than 100 political dissidents have been murdered since Philippine President Benigno Aquino III took office,” she said. “Filipinos are also victims of their own government, hence they should not be regarded as the same as the Philippine government.”
On Wednesday, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Pan Men-an (潘孟安), who hails from the same constituency in Pingtung County as Hung, said on his Facebook page that “the perpetrator who fired on our fishing boat is the administration of Philippine President Benigno Aquino III, not the Filipinos. We must not vent our anger on innocent Philippine nationals in Taiwan, because doing so would only result in a deepening animosity.”
“These vulnerable Filipino workers have been doing their duty. They were not the thugs who initiated the shooting,” Pan said.
A number of netizens echoed Pan’s call by urging the public not to use Philippine nationals as scapegoats, nor to complicate the matter.
Meanwhile, some netizens and Pingtung-based Filipinos dismissed allegations of victimization in their area.
“Over the past decades, the nation has seen quite a few fishermen from Pingtung’s Donggang Township (東港) being detained and even killed by the Philippines. Yet, has anyone ever seen a Filipino being chased down and beaten on the streets of Donggang?” a netizen wrote.
A Filipino spouse in Pingtung’s Chaojhou Township (潮州), who identified herself as Lin Li-na (林麗娜), said all her co-workers were easygoing and friendly toward her.
Chen Chi-lan (陳季嵐), proprietor of the restaurant where Lin worksw, said Lin had a positive work attitude and always managed to finish her work, no matter how demanding it was.
“She is optimistic and constantly has a smile on her face, and really gets along well with her colleagues,” Chen said.
He added that despite their indignation over the shooting and the escalating diplomatic row between Taipei and Manila, Lin’s relationship with her peers was not affected.
Additional reporting by Wu Liang-yi and Cheng Shu-ting
Liya Chu (朱如茵), whose parents are New York-based Taiwanese restaurateurs, has been crowned the champion of US television cooking competition MasterChef Junior, after wowing the judges, including celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay, with a feast of fusion cuisine. In the finale of the show’s eighth season, broadcast on Thursday, Chu walked away with US$100,000 after serving a spread of spiced duck breast with scallion pancakes and miso eggplant, followed by coconut pandan panna cotta with a passion fruit coulis and sesame tuille. Chu, who was 10 years old at the time of filming three years ago, faced off against then-11-year-old Grayson Price from
A university student has gained the spotlight for an interactive map he designed detailing all of China’s military bases and installations throughout the Indo-Pacific region. Soochow University music student Joseph Wen (溫約瑟), who calls himself an amateur military enthusiast, said he created the map to “help people better understand the cross-strait situation.” Wen originally posted the map online on June 14 last year, but it gained greater attention after he mentioned it during an appearance on a China Television talk show. On the show, Wen said he had gathered information on the locations from publicly available Web sites, as
RISK FACTORS: ‘We hope people can cooperate and endure it ... it is possibly the very important last mile,’ Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung said Taiwan’s COVID-19 restrictions and mask regulations are to remain the same next month, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said yesterday. The center reported 42,112 new local COVID-19 cases and 85 deaths, saying that the number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients has dropped to a new low this month. Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the CECC, said that the center is keeping COVID-19 restrictions and mask regulations the same due to the local virus situation, and an increase in the number of imported cases of the new Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 of SARS-CoV-2, among other risk factors. Easing
GLOBAL STRATEGY: Indo-Pacific alliances need reinforcement to prevent Chinese occupation of Taiwan, which would threaten Japan, Hawaii and Australia, Pompeo said The US should officially recognize Taiwan as a free, independent nation and establish official diplomatic ties, former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo told an event at the Hudson Institute in Washington on Friday. Every US president since Harry Truman has considered Taiwan’s existence to be of utmost importance to US national security, Pompeo said. Taiwan is a principal US partner in technology and economic matters, and if China were to capture Taiwan’s semiconductor supply chain, it would severely hamper the US economy, Pompeo said. Should China occupy Taiwan, it would severely weaken US influence in the Indo-Pacific region and its surrounding areas,
RSS