Poor Eslite decision
I was shocked by the article “Eslite pulls out of deal to screen Tiananmen movie” (May 31, page 1) by Liu Li-jen, Chang Hui-wen and Jake Chung.
The authors mention the refusal by Eslite to screen a Chinese Television System documentary on democratic movements in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
The authors think that Eslite’s self-censorship shows that it is afraid of entangling with political issues due to China’s pressure.
A bookstore should help liberate thoughts and ideas. However, by practicing self-censorship of the film, which has sensitive elements, Eslite is actually confining voices.
What is more, the attitude of Eslite toward this incident is contradictory to the brand itself.
On its official Web site, Eslite says its vision is to be innovative and enlighten people. In reality, it has failed as a platform for freedom of speech and publication.
There are actually a lot of books about politics on Eslite’s best-seller list, such as the memoir of former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), and its movie theaters are screening a lot of movies concerning sensitive political issues. For example, it is showing Apocalypse Now, a movie about the horrors of the Vietnam War.
It does not seem fair for Eslite to stop showing [the Tiananmen] movie because of its content.
I think Eslite should screen the documentary. After all, a bookstore should celebrate liberty, not keep knowledge captive. If Eslite keeps blocking sensitive issues from the public, it will no longer be a bookstore that respects different voices.
Recently, a lot of independent bookstores have been unafraid to voice their opinions on sensitive issues and accept differences. This is what a bookstore should be about — the liberation of knowledge.
Claudy Cheng
Taipei
No killing animals
An article about the woes of monkeys in Taitung County has provoked my deep reflection on animal rights (“Taitung County mulling monkey-catching contests,” June 5, page 2).
The author stated that the Taitung County Government was considering the event to alleviate farmers’ complaints about monkeys ravaging their orchards.
By “catching,” they mean to kill.
Taitung County Councilor Ku Chih-cheng (古志成) said that the county gave out insufficient subsidies for farmers to build electrified fences. Therefore, the county should provide more subsidies rather than hold a contest to kill monkeys.
With all the education I have, I know that killing others, human beings or not, is never a solution. Instead of killing monkeys, some methods can be adopted to prevent them from entering orchards.
They can be electrified fences or ditches, but they definitely cannot be hunting.
We do not have the right to decide the fate of wild monkeys by hunting them. We cannot kill people because they get in our way, so what right do we have to take such action against monkeys because they damage orchards?
We do not have that right. All lives are equal. If we should not kill people, we should not kill monkeys either.
As independent Taitung County Councilor Lin Wei-chih (林威志) said in the article, the department should find other ways to stop the monkeys.
Maybe the county could provide premiums and technical help so that the farmers can effectively prevent the monkeys from raiding their orchards.
However, among all the options the county has, killing animals is not an option. It is absolutely not a righteous action to take.
Kaylah Yu
Taipei
Jan. 1 marks a decade since China repealed its one-child policy. Just 10 days before, Peng Peiyun (彭珮雲), who long oversaw the often-brutal enforcement of China’s family-planning rules, died at the age of 96, having never been held accountable for her actions. Obituaries praised Peng for being “reform-minded,” even though, in practice, she only perpetuated an utterly inhumane policy, whose consequences have barely begun to materialize. It was Vice Premier Chen Muhua (陳慕華) who first proposed the one-child policy in 1979, with the endorsement of China’s then-top leaders, Chen Yun (陳雲) and Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平), as a means of avoiding the
The last foreign delegation Nicolas Maduro met before he went to bed Friday night (January 2) was led by China’s top Latin America diplomat. “I had a pleasant meeting with Qiu Xiaoqi (邱小琪), Special Envoy of President Xi Jinping (習近平),” Venezuela’s soon-to-be ex-president tweeted on Telegram, “and we reaffirmed our commitment to the strategic relationship that is progressing and strengthening in various areas for building a multipolar world of development and peace.” Judging by how minutely the Central Intelligence Agency was monitoring Maduro’s every move on Friday, President Trump himself was certainly aware of Maduro’s felicitations to his Chinese guest. Just
As the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) races toward its 2027 modernization goals, most analysts fixate on ship counts, missile ranges and artificial intelligence. Those metrics matter — but they obscure a deeper vulnerability. The true future of the PLA, and by extension Taiwan’s security, might hinge less on hardware than on whether the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) can preserve ideological loyalty inside its own armed forces. Iran’s 1979 revolution demonstrated how even a technologically advanced military can collapse when the social environment surrounding it shifts. That lesson has renewed relevance as fresh unrest shakes Iran today — and it should
On today’s page, Masahiro Matsumura, a professor of international politics and national security at St Andrew’s University in Osaka, questions the viability and advisability of the government’s proposed “T-Dome” missile defense system. Matsumura writes that Taiwan’s military budget would be better allocated elsewhere, and cautions against the temptation to allow politics to trump strategic sense. What he does not do is question whether Taiwan needs to increase its defense capabilities. “Given the accelerating pace of Beijing’s military buildup and political coercion ... [Taiwan] cannot afford inaction,” he writes. A rational, robust debate over the specifics, not the scale or the necessity,
RSS