The Transitional Justice Commission’s plans to establish a psychotherapy center for victims of political repression have been scrapped due to a lack of funding, sources said last week.
The news came after former commission deputy chairman Chang Tien-chin (張天欽) last month resigned following the leak of an audio recording in which Chang allegedly said it would be a pity not to manipulate public opinion against Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) New Taipei City mayoral candidate Hou You-yi (侯友宜).
Commission chairman Huang Huang-hsiung (黃煌雄) on Oct. 6 also submitted his resignation.
A division under the Transitional Justice Commission responsible for rebuilding social trust planned to set up a psychotherapy center to provide counseling to victims of the 228 Incident and the White Terror era, as well as their families and perpetrators who experience feelings of guilt.
Chang was tasked with finding a location for the center, a commission member said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The commission had hoped to decide between an office building next to Dongmen MRT Station and a building on Wuxing Street (吳興街), but plans to open the center came to a standstill after Chang’s resignation last month, sources said.
Members of the commission hoped that Huang would discuss funding for the center with the Executive Yuan, but he resigned unexpectedly, they said.
As the commission was newly established in the spring, it is being financed by the Executive Yuan’s second reserve fund this year, the sources said.
However, the Executive Yuan has reserved much of the funding to address damage caused by flooding in the south, they said, adding that the controversy involving Chang’s remarks has also made it difficult to request a budget.
Huang had admitted that the commission had been unable to pay its employees’ salaries in the first few months after its establishment, the sources said.
While the commission would not be opening a psychotherapy center, it would not cancel its plans to provide counseling to victims of political repression, the unnamed commission member said.
However, the commission would not acquire a physical space for the purpose, they said, adding that it would instead institute home visits to victims of political repression and their families.
The commission would continue to train therapists and social workers, they said, adding that a pilot counseling program has already started.
People can call the commission to schedule home visits if they need therapy, the member added.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the