The Taiwan Fund for Children and Families has established April 28 as Child Protection Day to raise awareness of child abuse, and yesterday invited 428 families to an event at the Chianti Boulevard Plaza in Taipei’s Xinyi District (信義) to show their support for a society free from child abuse.
Last year, 19,174 children and teenagers were reported to have suffered abuse, meaning more than 52 children are exposed to violence and an unsafe environment each day, and the organization said that 71 percent of those cases involved the children’s parents.
“Every month, we lose forever 1.4 children, on average, to deadly child abuse. We are strongly against depriving children of their right to life. Committing suicide with children is the gravest kind of child abuse,” said fund chief executive Betty Ho (何素秋), who urged the public to care about the children around them and refer those who need help to the organization.
The campaign urges parents to refrain from physically punishing children and to either calm down when enraged by their children’s behavior, or call the organization for assistance.
The climax of the event was the playing of an audio recording made by the child protection authority, in which a father is heard scolding and beating his child in a rage as the child’s mother intervened to no avail, and was also beaten.
While the recording was aired, the participants at the event were asked to blindfold themselves to feel the horror experienced by the helpless child.
“The figure of 19,174 [cases] is probably the tip of the iceberg. It is only due to greater awareness that the number of child abuse cases reported has increased in the past three years,” Ho said.
“People are now telling parents off when they exhibit abusive behavior toward children in public, but we are hoping to further raise public consciousness,” Ho added.
AGGRESSION: China’s latest intrusions set a new benchmark for its ‘gray zone’ tactics and possibly a new pattern that it would attempt to normalize, a researcher said China’s latest military exercises represent a new challenge to Taiwan’s legal authority to demarcate its borders in the Taiwan Strait, a defense expert said, adding that the fleets in the latest exercises were likely the most powerful the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) ever assembled. The PLA conducted military exercises from Sunday last week to 6am on Friday, which encompassed large swathes of the western Pacific, including the Taiwan Strait and waters off the Philippines and Guam, National Policy Foundation associate research fellow Chieh Chung (揭仲) said on Friday. The Ministry of National Defense said that it detected 70 warship and 162 aircraft
DOMESTIC MARKET: To protect the livelihoods of local egg farmers, the government adopted a new method for releasing imported eggs, the agriculture minister said More than 54 million imported eggs will be disposed, as their expiration date has passed, Minister of Agriculture Chen Chi-chung (陳吉仲) said yesterday. Chen made the remarks at a news conference in Taipei, explaining the flow of imported eggs following recent controversies regarding the products. The ministry introduced a special egg import program to address a nationwide egg shortage earlier this year. However, controversies have risen in recent weeks. These included an accusation that the government helped some egg importing companies over others, eggs imported from Brazil that had an incorrect expiration date, and egg shipments from Brazil that were found
PACIFIC OCEAN: Defense experts have warned that the ‘Shandong,’ China’s second largest aircraft carrier, poses a serious threat to eastern Taiwan’s defenses The drills conducted by the Chinese aircraft carrier Shandong in the Western Pacific last week were more aimed at showcasing China’s military capabilities to the US rather than toward Taiwan, a Taiwanese defense expert said yesterday. Lin Yin-yu (林穎佑), an assistant professor at Tamkang University’s Graduate Institute of International Affairs and Strategic Studies, said the drills which involved dozens of warplanes sought to test China’s anti-access and area denial capabilities should the US and its allies attempt to interfere in a cross-strait conflict. Lin said that the latest Chinese drills coincided with a joint maritime exercise conducted by the US, South Korea
Thousands of bottles of Sriracha have been returned or destroyed after the discovery of excessive sulfur dioxide, a bleaching agent, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced on Tuesday. About 12,600 bottles totaling 9,991.8kg of the hot sauce imported from the US by Emporium Corp (河洛企業) were flagged at the border for containing illegal levels of sulfur dioxide, the FDA said in its regular border inspection announcement. Inspectors discovered 0.5g per kilogram of the common bleaching agent and preservative, higher than the 0.03g permitted, it said. As it is the first time within six months the product has been flagged, Sriracha products from
RSS