Shih Shin University yesterday denied that it would stop publication of Four-Way Voice (四方報), the only newspaper in Taiwan serving immigrants and migrant workers from Southeast Asian nations, adding that it would reinstate the print edition in August after resolving several issues related to its continued operation.
The university, which owns the newspaper, issued the statement after the paper’s news team announced on Facebook that all nine full-time staff are to leave the university on April 30, marking the end of the publication.
The team thanked the university and readers for their support for nearly a decade. It added that it would publish a commemorative edition of the newspaper in Vietnamese, Thai, Indonesian, Filipino, Cambodian and Burmese, which people can download for free.
Photo courtesy of the Four Way Voice
“Even though the publication would cease to exist and our Facebook page will no longer be updated, we hope that Taiwanese society can continue to care about the issues that Southeast Asian immigrants and migrant workers face. They have yet to be fairly treated by Taiwanese society. We also hope that the spirit of the newspaper’s founder, Lucie Cheng (成露茜) — which is to speak for the minorities — would continue to exist,” the team said.
In response, the university said that Four-Way Voice would continue to exist, adding that it would be transformed into a social enterprise with the legal status of a corporate juridical person.
“The newspaper has existed for nearly a decade, but its legal status is still in limbo. As such, we must first resolve many legal issues, such as trademark and intellectual property rights, before it is turned into a social enterprise,” the university said.
On why it has to temporarily suspend publication, the university said that Four-Way Voice is supported by a budget reserved for another school paper, Lih Pao Daily (台灣立報). However, that budget would soon run out, and the university has to suspend publication as it needs funds for the full-time staff’s severance payments.
The university said that the Vietnamese edition of the newspaper would still be published for next month. An office is to be established in June to prepare for the reinstatement of Four-Way Voice in August.
The university will also hold a press conference to announce a partner that would work with the school in publishing the paper.
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
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
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