President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday said that his administration would step up efforts to push for an official apology and compensation from Japan for forcing Taiwanese women to serve as “comfort women” during World War II.
“We need to pick up speed and solve the problem,” Ma said in his New Year’s Day address.
His administration will continue to demand that Japan deliver long overdue justice and restore the dignity of the victims, Ma said, adding that he has asked Taiwan’s representative in Japan to deal with the matter.
Ma’s comments followed Monday’s agreement between Japan and South Korea, in which Japan agreed to apologize for its actions regarding South Korean comfort women during the war and donate about ¥1 billion (US$8.29 million) to a foundation set up by the South Korean government to help former comfort women.
That same day, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe issued an apology to the South Korean comfort women.
Taiwan has been asking for a similar agreement and an apology.
The term comfort women refers to women taken from Japan, the former Japanese colonies of Taiwan and Korea, as well as Japanese occupied territories in China and Southeast Asia to provide sexual services for Japanese military personnel during the war.
The exact number of comfort women remains unknown, but historians estimate that as many as 400,000 women were forced into sexual service during the war.
In his speech, Ma highlighted Taiwan’s role as a peacemaker and a provider of humanitarian aid, which he said has won global acclaim during his tenure.
Relations with the US, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, the EU and ASEAN have reached the best point of the past 40 years, he said.
Ma also touted Taiwan’s efforts to attract foreign visitors, saying that the nation saw a record 10.43 million visitors in the past year.
This is an indication of Taiwan’s growing popularity in the international arena, Ma said.
The number of nations and territories that grant preferential treatment to Republic of China passport holders increased from 54 to 161 since he took office in 2008, he said.
“At the same time, an increasing number of Taiwanese are going abroad, which demonstrates that Taiwan has become a constructive member of the international community thanks to the nation’s open-door policy and peace initiatives,” Ma said.
It was Ma’s last New Year’s Day address as president before his second four-year term ends in May.
The presidential and legislative elections are scheduled for Jan. 16.
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
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
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