Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) yesterday dismissed the Presidential Office’s suggestion to push for legislation banning ethnic discrimination and ensuring transitional justice, saying pursuit of the latter could lead to greater social divisions and hatred.
“It would be better to not mix things together. We should seek to understand what the true essence of transitional justice is. If it targets certain individuals or has particular ways of handling things, then I wonder whether the objective is to achieve justice or twist it,” Hung said in Taipei.
If the goal is to “twist” justice, then transitional justice will not promote social harmony, but instead could aggravate divisions and hatred, she added.
Hung was responding to comments made by Presidential Office spokesman Alex Huang (黃重諺) on Saturday, who welcomed the KMT’s willingness to focus on ethnic equality and urged Hung and the KMT to join the government’s efforts to push for transitional justice to ensure a “true” implementation of freedom, democracy, justice and human rights.
Huang’s remarks came after Hung announced the KMT’s plan to propose legislation banning “discrimination based on ethnicity,” amid public outcry over self-styled citizen reporter Hung Su-chu’s (洪素珠) recent verbal abuse of older waishengren (外省人) — a term used to refer to people who fled to Taiwan with the KMT regime in 1949 after its defeat in the Chinese Civil War.
The KMT also issued a statement yesterday denouncing the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) promotion of transitional justice as a ploy to sow ethnic hatred and a catalyst for bigoted rhetoric, such as that voiced by the Taiwan Civil Government, a group with which Hung Su-chu is affiliated.
“The DPP’s transitional justice plan and the KMT’s ethnic discrimination legislation proposal are fundamentally different,” KMT Culture and Communications Committee director Chow Chi-wai (周志偉) said in the statement.
“What we aim to do is eliminate hatred,” Chow said.
Instead of promoting legislation concerning people’s livelihoods, Chow said that the Legislative Yuan, in which the DPP has the majority, has apparently focused on advocating for legislation to manage illicit party assets and promoting transitional justice.
Taiwan has a pluralistic, immigrant society that revolves around the Zhonghua culture (中華文化), Chow said, urging the DPP to support the KMT’s ethnic discrimination bill, as it endeavors to ensure respect and tolerance among people with different ethnic backgrounds.
Costa Rica sent a group of intelligence officials to Taiwan for a short-term training program, the first time the Central American country has done so since the countries ended official diplomatic relations in 2007, a Costa Rican media outlet reported last week. Five officials from the Costa Rican Directorate of Intelligence and Security last month spent 23 days in Taipei undergoing a series of training sessions focused on national security, La Nacion reported on Friday, quoting unnamed sources. The Costa Rican government has not confirmed the report. The Chinese embassy in Costa Rica protested the news, saying in a statement issued the same
Taiwan’s Liu Ming-i, right, who also goes by the name Ray Liu, poses with a Chinese Taipei flag after winning the gold medal in the men’s physique 170cm competition at the International Fitness and Bodybuilding Federation Asian Championship in Ajman, United Arab Emirates, yesterday.
Temperatures in New Taipei City’s Sindian District (新店) climbed past 37°C yesterday, as the Central Weather Administration (CWA) issued heat alerts for 16 municipalities, warning the public of intense heat expected across Taiwan. The hottest location in Taiwan was in Sindian, where the mercury reached 37.5°C at about 2pm, according to CWA data. Taipei’s Shilin District (士林) recorded a temperature of 37.4°C at noon, Taitung County’s Jinfeng Township (金峰) at 12:50 pm logged a temperature of 37.4°C and Miaoli County’s Toufen Township (頭份) reached 36.7°C at 11:40am, the CWA said. The weather agency yesterday issued a yellow level information notice for Taipei, New
A year-long renovation of Taipei’s Bangka Park (艋舺公園) began yesterday, as city workers fenced off the site and cleared out belongings left by homeless residents who had been living there. Despite protests from displaced residents, a city official defended the government’s relocation efforts, saying transitional housing has been offered. The renovation of the park in Taipei’s Wanhua District (萬華), near Longshan Temple (龍山寺), began at 9am yesterday, as about 20 homeless people packed their belongings and left after being asked to move by city personnel. Among them was a 90-year-old woman surnamed Wang (王), who last week said that she had no plans