As Taiwan strives to attract more international students, yet another embarrassing incident of mistreatment came to light this week. The incident, involving students from Uganda, is yet another blemish on the nation’s human rights record, which is otherwise progressive.
Online media firm The Reporter wrote in an investigative report that Ugandan students at Chung Chou University of Science and Technology in Changhua County’s Yuanlin City (員林) were denied promised scholarships and forced to work overnight factory shifts after they had been promised “paid internship opportunities.”
There were also few classes in English compared with what was advertised, students said.
Like many migrant workers from Southeast Asia in Taiwan, such students are commonly saddled with heavy debts after a short time in Taiwan. Moving here is a serious and costly investment for them, which makes The Reporter’s account even more heartbreaking.
The media firm created a comic based on an interview with a foreign student identified only as Collines, who did not move to Taiwan arbitrarily or because of scholarships, but because he hoped his own nation could emulate Taiwan’s success. Instead, he and his classmates faced a hellish scenario, saying that they were overworked, barely had enough money to eat, learned nothing in class and fell into debt.
Like many migrant workers, they could not quit and go home because of the debt.
While the Ministry of Education has barred Chung Chou University from accepting international students, it did not accept any responsibility and showed no remorse.
“There was a major difference in understanding between foreign students and school administration,” it said.
This is a shame not only on a human rights level, but because it continues to undermine the government’s efforts to boost Taiwan’s foreign student population — such as the ministry’s four-year, NT$500 million (US$18.06 million) plan announced last year to recruit African students — as the nation’s birthrate plummets.
Were such students to enjoy their time in Taiwan, they would be more inclined to stay and help in fields related to their expertise, which is needed as the labor force shrinks. If they were to return home, there would be programs funding them to establish undergraduate programs in fields in which Taiwan has a leading position.
However, people like Collines will go back and tell others not to bother with Taiwan.
The Reporter’s account is the latest in a string of such incidents over the past few years. In 2018, there were reports that Sri Lankan students were being forced to work in slaughterhouses and factories. More instances of universities working with employment agencies to trick foreign students into becoming a source of cheap labor came to light the following year.
The education providers are punished, but the problem of student shortages is worsening, providing more opportunities for unscrupulous brokers.
These problems need to be looked at comprehensively, not just to prevent exploitation, but to ensure that foreign students actually receive high-quality education.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) has caused havoc with his attempts to overturn the democratic and constitutional order in the legislature. If we look at this devolution from the context of a transition to democracy from authoritarianism in a culturally Chinese sense — that of zhonghua (中華) — then we are playing witness to a servile spirit from a millennia-old form of totalitarianism that is intent on damaging the nation’s hard-won democracy. This servile spirit is ingrained in Chinese culture. About a century ago, Chinese satirist and author Lu Xun (魯迅) saw through the servile nature of
In their New York Times bestseller How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt said that democracies today “may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders. Many government efforts to subvert democracy are ‘legal,’ in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy — making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process.” Moreover, the two authors observe that those who denounce such legal threats to democracy are often “dismissed as exaggerating or
Monday was the 37th anniversary of former president Chiang Ching-kuo’s (蔣經國) death. Chiang — a son of former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), who had implemented party-state rule and martial law in Taiwan — has a complicated legacy. Whether one looks at his time in power in a positive or negative light depends very much on who they are, and what their relationship with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is. Although toward the end of his life Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law and steered Taiwan onto the path of democratization, these changes were forced upon him by internal and external pressures,
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus in the Legislative Yuan has made an internal decision to freeze NT$1.8 billion (US$54.7 million) of the indigenous submarine project’s NT$2 billion budget. This means that up to 90 percent of the budget cannot be utilized. It would only be accessible if the legislature agrees to lift the freeze sometime in the future. However, for Taiwan to construct its own submarines, it must rely on foreign support for several key pieces of equipment and technology. These foreign supporters would also be forced to endure significant pressure, infiltration and influence from Beijing. In other words,
RSS