As the nation reels from the news that student activist Dai Lin (林冠華) has taken his own life, an interview with the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper) showed the pressure he was under due to his participation in protests against the government’s planned changes to high-school student curriculum guidelines.
Lin was one of 33 people arrested on Thursday night last week for entering the Ministry of Education building and was facing possible prosecution along with 23 other activists.
During a telephone interview on Sunday — two days after his release on bail — Lin said that the principal of New Taipei City’s Juang Jing Vocational High School had visited him hours earlier to discuss his involvement in the demonstration.
Facebook screen grab
“The principal started off by asking me what I really wanted and if there were any messages I needed him to help me convey,” said Lin, who had applied for leave from the school to devote more time to the protests.
The 20-year-old said the principal asked him a lot of questions such as: “Did I know what I was doing? Had I thought this through? Had I fulfilled my duty [as a student]? Had I thought about my future and whether I would still be able to find a job after the arrest.”
Lin said he told the principal he had taken all those things into consideration before joining the protest against the opaque changes to the curriculum and that what had saddened the students the most was seeing their own teachers and principals dismissing their efforts out of hand.
“I think the principal achieved what he intended. After our talk, he went to speak to my mother downstairs for about 10 minutes. All of a sudden, my parents, who had never spoken against my participation said: ‘Who are you to fight this cause? Don’t be too full of yourself,’” Lin said.
“Their words made me disappointed in myself,” he added.
Asked if other student protesters had also been talked to by their schools’ authorities, Lin said the movement would not take any action if his was an isolated case, but that protesters would make their objections known if they ever discovered the Ministry of Education was behind a campaign of intimidation.
Lin said student movements were not frivolous activities because participants often had to undergo questioning from authorities and their characters can be attacked.
“I sincerely hope that parents and school authorities take the time to understand why students are fighting for this cause despite all the pressure we are under. Do not just tell us that the curriculum will no longer be our problem after we graduate and go to college,” he said.
Lin said that many authority figures show no understanding or empathy with the movement’s efforts.
“Maybe the schools are under pressure [from the ministry] or our movement has caused them too much inconvenience. Either way, they should not have questioned or dismissed our motives,” he said.
Taiwan has received more than US$70 million in royalties as of the end of last year from developing the F-16V jet as countries worldwide purchase or upgrade to this popular model, government and military officials said on Saturday. Taiwan funded the development of the F-16V jet and ended up the sole investor as other countries withdrew from the program. Now the F-16V is increasingly popular and countries must pay Taiwan a percentage in royalties when they purchase new F-16V aircraft or upgrade older F-16 models. The next five years are expected to be the peak for these royalties, with Taiwan potentially earning
STAY IN YOUR LANE: As the US and Israel attack Iran, the ministry has warned China not to overstep by including Taiwanese citizens in its evacuation orders The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday rebuked a statement by China’s embassy in Israel that it would evacuate Taiwanese holders of Chinese travel documents from Israel amid the latter’s escalating conflict with Iran. Tensions have risen across the Middle East in the wake of US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran beginning Saturday. China subsequently issued an evacuation notice for its citizens. In a news release, the Chinese embassy in Israel said holders of “Taiwan compatriot permits (台胞證)” issued to Taiwanese nationals by Chinese authorities for travel to China — could register for evacuation to Egypt. In Taipei, the ministry yesterday said Taiwan
Taiwan is awaiting official notification from the US regarding the status of the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade (ART) after the US Supreme Court ruled US President Donald Trump's global tariffs unconstitutional. Speaking to reporters before a legislative hearing today, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said that Taiwan's negotiation team remains focused on ensuring that the bilateral trade deal remains intact despite the legal challenge to Trump's tariff policy. "The US has pledged to notify its trade partners once the subsequent administrative and legal processes are finalized, and that certainly includes Taiwan," Cho said when asked about opposition parties’ doubts that the ART was
If China chose to invade Taiwan tomorrow, it would only have to sever three undersea fiber-optic cable clusters to cause a data blackout, Jason Hsu (許毓仁), a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator, told a US security panel yesterday. In a Taiwan contingency, cable disruption would be one of the earliest preinvasion actions and the signal that escalation had begun, he said, adding that Taiwan’s current cable repair capabilities are insufficient. The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) yesterday held a hearing on US-China Competition Under the Sea, with Hsu speaking on
RSS