Minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) yesterday said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) would do its best to assist overseas Taiwanese in need.
The remarks came after a Taiwanese student expressed disappointment at the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in New York after seeking help from there following an attack.
The student said in a post on the Dcard online forum on Saturday that she was attacked by a woman at the New York Public Library on Wednesday.
Photo: Lu Yi-hsuan, Taipei Times
The woman punched her on the right side of her head for no reason when she left the toilet, causing her to hit the corner of a wall, which left her bleeding, the student said.
The student’s friend asked the security personnel at the library for help, but five of them let the attacker leave the scene and asked her friend to calm down, she said, adding that she was later sent to hospital in an ambulance.
The student called the emergency line provided by the ministry afterward, but was only provided with a telephone number of an attorney, she said.
Asked by reporters about the incident, Wu yesterday said that since the student wished to seek legal remedy over the incident, the office recommended an attorney who had worked with the office before.
He said that the ministry and all foreign embassies and missions would do their utmost to assist overseas Taiwanese.
The ministry said in a statement that the office asked about the incident and what assistance the student needed when it received her call on Friday.
The student said she wished to file a lawsuit against the library, as its staff let the suspected attacker leave before the police arrived, so the office provided her with contact information of the attorneys it worked with and the Asian American Bar Association of New York, the ministry said.
The office told the student that it would be happy to provide further assistance and kept in close contact with local law enforcement, it said.
The ministry condemned any violence, including racial discrimination and verbal or physical violence, and said that it would ask offices in the US to keep in touch with overseas Taiwanese to offer help when needed.
In case of an emergency that threatens personal safety, people should take measures to protect themselves and immediately contact local law enforcement agencies or the nearest Taiwanese office abroad for assistance, it said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching