A memorial service for Reverend Kao Chun-ming (高俊明), 89, a Presbyterian pastor known for democracy activism who passed away on Thursday last week, was held by his family in Kaohsiung yesterday.
Kao was an advocate of Taiwanese independence and helped Shih Ming-te (施明德) flee from authorities following the 1979 Kaohsiung Incident during the White Terror era, for which he was imprisoned.
Kao’s family said he had asked that no obituary be written, and they were to decline wreaths and other memorial items, while the service was to be solemn and simple.
Photo: Huang Chia-lin, Taipei Times
Despite this, hundreds of people attended the afternoon ceremony at Hai-po Church in Hunei District (湖內), including Vice President Chen Chien-jen (陳建仁), former premier William Lai (賴清德), Presidential Office Secretary-General Chen Chu (陳菊), former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and Shih.
Kao’s authorship of “A Declaration of Human Rights by the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan” in 1977 was a seminal moment in Taiwanese history, Lai said.
He showed “fearless leadership” in the struggle against authoritarianism, Lai said.
“Kao was kind and generous in ways that are impossible to describe in words,” he said.
A tearful Shih told attendees that Kao endured the hardships of the White Terror era while maintaining his integrity and principles while the courage of others faltered.
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