Germany recognizes the role that Taiwan plays in international affairs and supports its participation in global forums, German Institute Taipei Director-General Thomas Prinz said.
Germany recognizes “the constructive role Taiwan plays in international affairs,” Prinz told reporters in an interview on Wednesday, adding that the country would therefore support Taiwan wherever it can within the framework of its “one China” policy.
“Of course we would like to see Taiwan contributing and cooperating in the international forum,” said Prinz, citing the World Health Assembly and Interpol. “But unfortunately that is not in our hands, we try to support Taiwan, but the given situation is quite complicated.”
Photo: CNA
Regarding current cross-strait relations, which have been strained since President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) assumed office in May 2016, Prinz said that any step taken by each side to reduce tensions in the Taiwan Strait would be appreciated.
“Nobody can win in a violent conflict. I think China is aware of that. The stability in this part of the region is in the utmost interest of all the stakeholders,” he said.
The international community needs China as a constructive partner — especially on issues related to climate change and the WTO — and China needs partners as well, Prinz said.
“In the end we all profit from a rules-based international order,” he added.
Calling Taiwan a like-minded democracy, Prinz said that Germany would continue to support it “as much as we can under the difficult circumstances.”
Regarding his country’s experience with transitional justice, Prinz said that it is not about seeking retribution against historical perpetrators or destroying a specific political party, but about creating harmony in society and addressing the injustices of the past.
Germany launched a transitional justice policy after reunification in 1990, when the German Democratic Republic became part of the Federal Republic of Germany.
Thousands of German citizens were victims of the former communist system in East Germany “who were spied on by their neighbors, sometimes by their families,” Prinz said. “These people wanted to know what has happened.”
In response to such demands, the new German government opened the files kept by the East German State Security Service, commonly known as the Stasi, to the general public, for everyone to consult, Prinz said.
Openness and making such files available were important to restoring truth and justice, he added.
Another lesson that Germany learned in the process of seeking transitional justice is that “we do not take revenge,” Prinz said.
“If you start taking revenge, you open a new area of conflict,” he added.
For instance, if the government puts perpetrators in jail or takes away their assets, such moves can alienate people “to an extent where they will not play a constructive role in society,” he said.
“So that is what we learned from our experience, to find a more or less harmonious way to deal with it without opening new lines of conflict,” he said.
Regarding the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, which the Democratic Progressive Party government considers a “controversial space” that needs to be recharacterized, Prinz said that he considers the buildings part of history.
“You can’t extinguish history by demolishing a building,” he said. “Sometimes it is better to put the monuments or the buildings in a certain frame to explain why they are there, to explain what happened in this time, instead of demolishing them.”
Giving monuments or buildings a “new democratic context,” “opening them for civil society to use and other purposes” would be a good choice, he added.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comment last year on Tokyo’s potential reaction to a Taiwan-China conflict has forced Beijing to rewrite its invasion plans, a retired Japanese general said. Takaichi told the Diet on Nov. 7 last year that a Chinese naval blockade or military attack on Taiwan could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, potentially allowing Tokyo to exercise its right to collective self-defense. Former Japan Ground Self-Defense Force general Kiyofumi Ogawa said in a recent speech that the remark has been interpreted as meaning Japan could intervene in the early stages of a Taiwan Strait conflict, undermining China’s previous assumptions
Taiwan Railways Corp (TRC) today announced that Shin Kong Mitsukoshi has been selected as the preferred bidder to operate the Taipei Railway Station shopping mall, replacing the current operator, Breeze Development Co Ltd. Among eight qualified firms that delivered presentations and were evaluated by a review committee, Shin Kong Mitsukoshi was ranked first, while Breeze was named the runner-up, the rail company said in a statement. Contract negotiations are to proceed in accordance with regulations, it said, adding that if negotiations with the top bidder fail, it could invite the second-ranked applicant to enter talks. Breeze in a statement today expressed doubts over
RSS