Taiwan and Palau on Sunday signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) in Taoyuan to boost bilateral cooperation between their Austronesian ethnic groups.
Council of Indigenous Peoples Minister Icyang Parod and Palauan Minister of Human Resources, Culture, Tourism and Development Ngiraibelas Tmetuchl signed the pact at a ceremony witnessed by Palauan President Surangel Whipps Jr, who arrived in Taiwan on Wednesday, leading a Palauan delegation for a state visit and to attend yesterday’s Double Ten National Day celebrations.
Lauding his deep ties with Palau, Icyang said he had visited the Pacific country four times and had met with several Palauan delegations on their visits to Taiwan.
Photo: Lee Jung-ping, Taipei Times
Tmetuchl and his tourism development team had also visited indigenous communities in Hualien and Taitung counties to gain an understanding of Taiwan’s policies in promoting aboriginal tourism, Icyang said.
Taiwan’s indigenous peoples, which comprise about 1 percent of the population, are Austronesian, and share ethnic and linguistic ties with other Austronesian people in countries across Southeast Asia and the Pacific, such as Palau.
Bilateral exchanges continued even during the COVID- 19 pandemic, Icyang said, adding that the MOU inked on Sunday would open a window for more comprehensive cooperation between the two countries on the sustainable development of their respective Austronesian communities.
Tmetuchl said that his and Icyang’s government agencies had maintained cooperative ties and engaged in exchanges for more than 10 years and achieving sustainable development for indigenous peoples was of great importance.
He said that through cooperation and exchanges, Palau had a better understanding of how to incorporate indigenous cultures into travel and tourism.
Tmetuchl suggested that developing close ties between indigenous tribal groups in the two countries could be forged through sisterhood ties.
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