The military must maintain its discipline, efficiency and effective training while carrying out a series of reforms, such as improving human rights protection and shifting to an all-volunteer force, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said yesterday.
Since earlier this year, men have been required to only go through a four-month mandatory training period, rather than the previous requirement of one year of compulsory military service, Ma said of the nation’s transition to an all-volunteer force.
Despite the new rules, the training equips the men with the skills required to be qualified riflemen who can help protect the country in a time of conflict, Ma said during a trip to a military base in Greater Taichung to show his support for the military.
Although the nation initially planned to shift to an all-volunteer force by early 2015, the government announced earlier this month a two-year delay in implementing the program due to a lack of recruits.
At the Chengkungling military training base, Ma also recalled his training there 45 years ago and said that his time in the military was an important time of personal growth.
Meanwhile, the president took the opportunity to stress the importance of the military maintaining its discipline and efficiency when it is undergoing reform to improve human rights protection following the death of an army corporal that damaged the military’s image.
Army corporal Hung Chung-chiu (洪仲丘) died on July 4 after being subjected to days of strenuous punishment exercises in stifling heat.
The incident sparked a public outcry, brought down the minister of national defense and forced the government to turn over trials of military personnel to civilian courts during peacetime.
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
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
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