Heavy discrimination against Chinese spouses has deterred some victims of domestic abuse from seeking help, women's rights activists said yesterday, in a bid to call attention to a murder trial starting today involving a Chinese spouse who stabbed her abusive Taiwanese husband last year.
"The animosity toward Chinese immigrants is still extremely prevalent in southern Taiwan. Many Taiwanese husbands treat their Chinese wives as no more than dispensable baby-making machines and human punching bags," said Wang Chuan-ping (王娟萍), president of a non-profit organization dedicated to issues involving cross-strait marriages.
In addition to the discrimination they face, Wang said many Chinese women married to abusive Taiwanese men hesitate to report the abuse because they are afraid their spouses will retaliate.
Victims are often ignorant of their rights as well, as they are kept as virtual prisoners in their homes, said Sandy Yeh (
Yeh said that Chinese spouses make up 66 percent of the 400,000 foreign spouses in Taiwan.
Yeh's group is trying to rally support for Chinese national Zhao Yanbing (
In July, the Taipei District Court convicted Zhao of murder, but reduced her sentence to 18 months when the judges ruled that she had acted out of "legitimate self-defense."
Unsatisfied with the ruling, prosecutors appealed to the Taipei High Court, demanding Zhao be given a harsher sentence.
Prosecutors claimed Zhao was not as "helpless and ignorant" as she made herself out to be because she had applied for restraining orders against her husband on two different occasions.
Zhao's applications for the restraining orders demonstrates that she understood her legal rights and was free to leave the relationship, the prosecutors said.
"This is a ridiculous claim," said Chen Yi-chien (
Taiwan is to receive the first batch of Lockheed Martin F-16 Block 70 jets from the US late this month, a defense official said yesterday, after a year-long delay due to a logjam in US arms deliveries. Completing the NT$247.2 billion (US$7.69 billion) arms deal for 66 jets would make Taiwan the third nation in the world to receive factory-fresh advanced fighter jets of the same make and model, following Bahrain and Slovakia, the official said on condition of anonymity. F-16 Block 70/72 are newly manufactured F-16 jets built by Lockheed Martin to the standards of the F-16V upgrade package. Republic of China
GREAT POWER COMPETITION: Beijing views its military cooperation with Russia as a means to push back against the joint power of the US and its allies, an expert said A recent Sino-Russian joint air patrol conducted over the waters off Alaska was designed to counter the US military in the Pacific and demonstrated improved interoperability between Beijing’s and Moscow’s forces, a national security expert said. National Defense University associate professor Chen Yu-chen (陳育正) made the comment in an article published on Wednesday on the Web site of the Journal of the Chinese Communist Studies Institute. China and Russia sent four strategic bombers to patrol the waters of the northern Pacific and Bering Strait near Alaska in late June, one month after the two nations sent a combined flotilla of four warships
Taiwan-Japan Travel Passes are available for use on public transit networks in the two countries, Taoyuan Metro Corp said yesterday, adding that discounts of up to 7 percent are available. Taoyuan Metro, the Taipei MRT and Japan’s Keisei Electric Railway teamed up to develop the pass. Taoyuan Metro operates the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport MRT Line, while Keisei Electric Railway offers express services between Tokyo’s Narita Airport, and the Keisei Ueno and Nippori stations in the Japanese capital, as well as between Narita and Haneda airports. The basic package comprises one one-way ticket on the Taoyuan MRT Line and one Skyliner ticket on
EVERYONE’S ISSUE: Kim said that during a visit to Taiwan, she asked what would happen if China attacked, and was told that the global economy would shut down Taiwan is critical to the global economy, and its defense is a “here and now” issue, US Representative Young Kim said during a roundtable talk on Taiwan-US relations on Friday. Kim, who serves on the US House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee, held a roundtable talk titled “Global Ties, Local Impact: Why Taiwan Matters for California,” at Santiago Canyon College in Orange County, California. “Despite its small size and long distance from us, Taiwan’s cultural and economic importance is felt across our communities,” Kim said during her opening remarks. Stanford University researcher and lecturer Lanhee Chen (陳仁宜), lawyer Lin Ching-chi
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