President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday expressed his condolences to victims of the White Terror era at a memorial in front of the Presidential Office.
The event, called “Love and Hope,” marked the 23rd anniversary since the lifting of Martial Law, a period during which thousands of people in Taiwan were subjected to purges, imprisonment, executions and repression by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
Addressing hundreds of people who gathered for the event, Ma apologized on behalf of the KMT and offered his condolences to the victims and their families.
PHOTO: LO PEI-DER, TAIPEI TIMES
“Those who were wrongly accused of crimes they were not guilty of suffered and sacrificed their health and reputation,” he said.
“For many years, [the victims] could not lead normal lives … As the government, we should admit our wrongdoings and express regret to those who suffered as a result of the White Terror,” he said.
The president said that since then, more than 7,000 cases had resulted in compensation by the government to victims or families.
Ma said that while the government could not travel back in time to right wrongs, it could apologize, compensate the victims and prevent similar tragedies from happening again.
Ma also used the occasion to promote the recently signed Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA).
Labor Party chairman Wu Jung-yuan (吳榮元), who also spoke at the event, called for reconciliation so that people could come to terms with the horrors of the past.
“We should look beyond our personal suffering and seek reconciliation and peace to achieve prosperity on both sides of the Taiwan Strait,” he said.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
RSS