Yang Tzu-hsien (楊子賢), president of National Chengchi University (NCCU) student organization the NCCU Wildfire Front, criticized the school administration for asking Student Affairs Office deputy director Tsai Yen-lung (蔡炎龍) — son of White Terror era political prisoner Tsai Kun-lin (蔡焜霖) — to apologize over a 228 Incident flier dispute.
“When I learned that Tsai Yen-lung would be speaking on behalf of the school administration at our news conference on Friday, I tried to stop him from speaking and asked NCCU president Edward Chow (周行一) to talk to us instead, because I know that Tsai Yen-lung is the son of former political prisoner Tsai Kun-lin, who was jailed during the White Terror era,” Yang said on Facebook late on Friday night.
Yang said that Tsai Yen-lung must have suffered when he had to shoulder the responsibility and face the students on behalf of the school administration.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
“It would be like defending Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), who persecuted his own father,” Yang added.
The White Terror era refers to suppression of public discussion of the 228 Incident. Tsai Kun-lin was arrested in 1950 at the age of 20 because he took part in a reading group in which a member was involved in “propaganda for communists,” and thus he was considered an accomplice by the then-authoritarian Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) regime.
After his arrest, Tsai Kun-lin was tortured, sentenced to 10 years in prison, and stayed in a prison camp constructed for political prisoners on Green Island (綠島) until his release in 1960.
The flier dispute began on Feb. 26, when on-campus military education officers and police officers took down fliers posted by NCCU Wildfire Front members at several locations on campus.
The fliers introduced people affected by the 228 Incident to raise student awareness of the history of the Incident.
The actions of the school authorities prompted confrontations with students.
On Friday, more than 100 NCCU students and faculty members protested the school administration, asking it to apologize.
The school administration responded with an apology by Tsai Yen-lung, while saying that officers had mishandled the issue.
However, Yang said that it was highly inappropriate to ask the son of a former political prisoner to speak on behalf of the school.
Yang called on the school administration to send someone more representative to speak to the protesters.
As of press time last night, the NCCU administration had not responded to the NCCU Wildfire Front’s latest call.
AGING: As of last month, people aged 65 or older accounted for 20.06 percent of the total population and the number of couples who got married fell by 18,685 from 2024 Taiwan has surpassed South Korea as the country least willing to have children, with an annual crude birthrate of 4.62 per 1,000 people, Ministry of the Interior data showed yesterday. The nation was previously ranked the second-lowest country in terms of total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime. However, South Korea’s fertility rate began to recover from 2023, with total fertility rate rising from 0.72 and estimated to reach 0.82 to 0.85 by last year, and the crude birthrate projected at 6.7 per 1,000 people. Japan’s crude birthrate was projected to fall below six,
Conflict with Taiwan could leave China with “massive economic disruption, catastrophic military losses, significant social unrest, and devastating sanctions,” a US think tank said in a report released on Monday. The German Marshall Fund released a report titled If China Attacks Taiwan: The Consequences for China of “Minor Conflict” and “Major War” Scenarios. The report details the “massive” economic, military, social and international costs to China in the event of a minor conflict or major war with Taiwan, estimating that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) could sustain losses of more than half of its active-duty ground forces, including 100,000 troops. Understanding Chinese
US President Donald Trump in an interview with the New York Times published on Thursday said that “it’s up to” Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be “very unhappy” with a change in the “status quo.” “He [Xi] considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing, but I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that. I hope he doesn’t do that,” Trump said. Trump made the comments in the context
SELF-DEFENSE: Tokyo has accelerated its spending goal and its defense minister said the nation needs to discuss whether it should develop nuclear-powered submarines China is ramping up objections to what it sees as Japan’s desire to acquire nuclear weapons, despite Tokyo’s longstanding renunciation of such arms, deepening another fissure in the two neighbors’ increasingly tense ties. In what appears to be a concerted effort, China’s foreign and defense ministries issued statements on Thursday condemning alleged remilitarism efforts by Tokyo. The remarks came as two of the country’s top think tanks jointly issued a 29-page report framing actions by “right-wing forces” in Japan as posing a “serious threat” to world peace. While that report did not define “right-wing forces,” the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was
RSS