Taiwanese environmental activists and a legislator yesterday supported a call by Japanese environmental groups to join an international lawsuit against the builders of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant for compensation for mental anguish as a means to stop nuclear power plant construction.
Representatives of Taiwanese groups including the Taiwan Environmental Protection Union (TEPU), Wild at Heart Legal Defense Association, Gongliao Anti-Nuclear Self-Help Association, and Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Tien Chiu-chin (田秋堇) yesterday accompanied the Japanese representatives at a press conference at the Legislative Yuan.
The Japanese representatives — Daisuke Sato of the No Nukes Asia Forum, Seungkoo Choi (崔勝久) of No-Nukes Asian Action and Akihiro Shima (島昭宏), their lawyer, attended discussions with the Taiwanese groups in the past few days, and invited them to file the international lawsuit together against companies including GE, Hitachi and Toshiba.
TEPU founding chairperson and veteran anti-nuclear activist Shih Hsin-min (施信民) said the lawyers’ group believes people have “no-nukes rights” that allow them to “avoid living in the fear of nuclear disasters.”
“It’s a weird situation that only the operating company — Tokyo Electric Power Co — has to shoulder the responsibility for dealing with damage caused by the disaster, while the builders of the plants do not,” Shima said, adding that it is unfair that the builders do not have to pay compensation.
Urging all clients to demand ¥1 million (US$9,574) from the manufacturing companies as compensation for mental anguish, the lawyers’ group said the main point of asking for compensation is to make the companies bear responsibility for what they build.
As the builders of the plants are exempted from responsibility, they may focus only on economic benefits, rather than nuclear safety, Shih said, adding that regulations in Taiwan also only require the operating company and government to take the blame in the event of a nuclear disaster.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift