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.
A fugitive in a suspected cosmetic surgery fraud case today returned to Taiwan from Canada, after being wanted for six years. Internet celebrity Su Chen-tuan (蘇陳端), known as Lady Nai Nai (貴婦奈奈), and her former boyfriend, plastic surgeon Paul Huang (黃博健), allegedly defrauded clients and friends of about NT$1 billion (US$30.66 million). Su was put on a wanted list in 2019 when she lived in Toronto, Canada, after failing to respond to subpoenas and arrest warrants from the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office. Su arrived at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport at 5am today on an EVA Air flight accompanied by a
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened 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), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
Restarting the No. 2 reactor at the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant would take up to 18 months, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said today. Kuo was answering questions during a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Economics Committee, where legislators are considering amendments to the Renewable Energy Development Act (再生能源發展條) amid concerns about the consequences of the Pingtung County reactor’s decommissioning scheduled for May 17. Its decommissioning is to mark the end of Taiwan’s nuclear power production. However, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers have proposed an amendment to the Nuclear Reactor Facilities Regulation Act (核子反應器設施管制法) that would extend the life of existing
RSS