The National Academy of Educational Research (NAER) on Saturday displayed six major publishers’ latest textbooks revised according to the recently adjusted high-school curriculum guidelines. Among them one publisher was found to have deleted portions from an entry about democracy movement pioneer Deng Nan-jung (鄭南榕).
Deng died 26 years ago when he set himself on fire in defense of “100 percent freedom of expression.” On April 7, 1989, Deng, then-editor-in-chief of Freedom Era Weekly, set himself alight as heavily armed police officers attempted to break into his office following 71 days of self-imposed isolation after he was charged with sedition for the anti-government stance of his magazine after it published a draft “Republic of Taiwan Constitution” in 1988.
Textbook publisher Kansi Cultural Co in its previous edition of a civic studies textbook, under the “Human Rights” chapter, had a photograph of a copy of Freedom Era Weekly with a caption reading: “Deng Nan-jung resorted to radical self-immolation to fight for freedom of speech. The photograph is the [weekly’s] special edition to mark the 20th anniversary of Deng’s death.”
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
However, in its new edition of the textbook, Deng’s photograph was replaced with information about a land seizure in Miaoli County’s Dapu Borough (大埔) in 2011 and seizures in Taipei’s Huaguang Community (華光社區) since 2010.
Meanwhile, a paragraph in the original Kansi edition reads: “Human rights need to be protected because the nation (國家) possesses armed forces, police and a justice system, which, with its immense power, might cause great damage and oppression to citizens. Human rights might be abused if they are not written into law.”
The original version also mentioned abuses of human rights, including illegal detentions perpetrated by the then-KMT government during the White Terror era.
The revised Kansi edition, in line with the adjusted high-school curriculum guidelines, in reference to the Japanese colonial era, replaced the term “nation” with “colonial government (殖民政府)” — a change educators said “weakened Taiwanese sovereignty and identity.”
In response, NAER director Yang Kuo-yang (楊國揚) said the academy would approve any textbooks that do not conflict with the new curriculum guidelines, adding that Kansi’s replacement of the Deng incident with land seizures does not constitute an infringement of the new curriculum guidelines.
However, Humane Education Foundation executive director Joanna Feng (馮喬蘭) said that there are always more prominent human rights champions than others, and the omission of Deng by Kansi could be associated with another example of muzzled freedom of speech.
Textbooks are where freedom of speech should be encouraged rather than silenced, she added.
Youth Group in Defense of Taiwanese Culture and History member Lan Shih-po (藍士博) said that in terms of the history of democratic movements, Deng’s struggle for freedom of speech was during the highly significant Martial Law era, while the illegal seizure in Dapu was merely a recent collusion between the government and business interests.
“The two [cases] are essentially different, and Deng’s contributions are irreplaceable,” he said.
National Alliance of Parents’ Organizations president Wu Fu-pin (吳福濱) said the freedom of speech that Taiwanese enjoy is the legacy of Deng and earlier activists, and it is inappropriate to redact Deng’s contributions as he is a human rights champion.
Meanwhile, the Deng Liberty Foundation issued a statement expressing “deep regret.”
“Civic education should help form a Taiwan-centric perspective among next-generation Taiwanese, but the heirs of a foreign, authoritarian regime have taken hold of the power to write history, and erased the White Terror era and massacres of Taiwanese — a serious offense against human rights — to gloss over what it has done and to exploit Taiwanese identity,” the statement said.
Additional reporting by Chen Hui-ping
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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:
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
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