Taiwanese tourists who cut their holidays short and returned home following Friday’s attacks in Paris that left at least 126 people dead said they were relieved to be back.
“It is nice to be back in Taiwan,” a woman surnamed Chung (莊) said upon her arrival at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport.
French President Francois Hollande said on Saturday that the attacks in Paris were “an act of war” organized from abroad by the Islamic State with internal help.
Following the attacks, the French government declared a national state of emergency.
Chung yesterday said she and her family hid in a friend’s house after the attacks and decided to depart for the airport in Paris earlier than scheduled to avoid the attack sites throughout the French capital.
Some of the Taiwanese tourists returning home from Paris on an EVA Airways flight yesterday showed videos and photographs they had taken on their mobile phones.
One tourist, surnamed Wu (吳), said they were on their way to their hotel after dinner when the gunmen launched their coordinated attacks.
“When our tour bus drove past the national stadium of France, we saw armed police officers and thought that something must be wrong. Our tour guide also said that something must have happened and asked us to stay on the bus. We were then told after we arrived at the hotel that there were terrorist attacks in the city. It was scary, but we are glad we can come home safely,” he said.
According to the Tourism Bureau, there were 145 Taiwanese in five tour groups in France when the attacks hit six sites in Paris at 9:20pm local time on Friday.
All of the Taiwanese tourists were safe, the bureau said.
The bureau added that a total of 275 Taiwanese tourists from six different travel agencies were traveling in Paris as of yesterday, adding that the tour guides would ask tourists if they would like to change their travel itineraries.
EVA Airways, which offers direct flights between Taipei and Paris, advised passengers to confirm their seats at Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport as early as possible due to heightened security at the airport, adding that its check-in counters would open three hours before flight departure times.
It said that passengers might face long queues due to security controls.
Meanwhile, the French representative office in Taiwan on Saturday established an online condolence book on Facebook.
It said the page was opened as a platform for people who want to send messages to pay their respects to the dead and express empathy with the people of France.
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,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods