Despite the anger from Aborigines, Vice President Annette Lu (
"Many Aborigines and even townships in central Taiwan wrote e-mail and letters to my office to express their support for my suggestion," Lu said yesterday during a tea party with reporters.
"Lin Wen-hsiung (
The Presidential Office arranged a news conference to allow the vice president to introduce the upcoming Democratic Pacific Assembly, which is scheduled to be launched during Aug. 13 to Aug. 15. Lu also answered questions about her emigration policy, which was made after the Tropical storm devastated mountainous areas in central Taiwan.
Lu stressed that the mountain and rivers in central Taiwan have been overcultivated, and the entire area needs rest. Therefore, she suggested that the residents, including both Han and Aborigines, may choose to move to Taiwan's allies in Latin America to develop their own new career as well as assisting in the exploitation of those countries' land resources.
Intending to reconcile misunderstandings between the vice president and those Aboriginal tribes, deputy secretary-general of the Presidential Office, Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) invited some heads of townships, who are also Aboriginal, from central Taiwan to a luncheon at the Presidential Office yesterday.
"We accept the Presidential Office's apology and we suggest that Vice President Lu should visit our township and listen to our ideas," said Cho Wen-hua (
Lu yesterday said that she was willing to inspect Aboriginal areas after completing the assembly, adding that her suggestion was supported by many Aboriginals and even Taiwan's diplomatic allies in the Central America.
"Although some [Aborigines] were making a clamor because of misunderstandings, there is a lot of support from overseas Taiwanese who are Aborigines," Lu said.
"Moreover, the representative councils of Hsinyi Township reached a resolution last month to seriously consider my immigration policy to move to Central America," Lu said.
Lu stressed that countries including Belize, Fiji, Peru and Costa Rica have expressed support for her immigration policy, and some have even promised to provide over 1,000 hectares of land for Taiwanese emigrants.
"I am not talking nonsense: my suggestion was made in accordance with so much support, and what I am concerned about is building a new cross-ocean relationship to connect eastern Asia and the western side of the Americas," Lu said. "Not to mention that the associations of Taiwanese people in Central America are all willing to assist those people who are willing to emigrate."
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
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