A coffee shop dialogue on Hong Kong's history of freedom.

Date: 2019/07/08
Translator: Ying-Jen Lin

Ms. T said, "Something dawned on me when I read a post by Hsiaoying (小英: President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文)'s nickname commonly used by Taiwanese) the other day.”

Ms. Q asked, "What was it?"

“That I didn’t realize Hong Kong used to be freer than Taiwan historically."

Q was confounded for a moment. “Well…yeah, you’re talking about the White Terror in Taiwan's history, aren’t you? You’re right. I never thought about that…”

"No matter how dark Hong Kong was, it still had freedom and food at least."

“Hsiaoying mentioned on her Facebook that when she was young, she would often use her stopovers in Hong Kong to check out books that she would not necessarily find in Taiwan," Miss T said. "During those times, in terms of the Chinese-speaking regions, Taiwan had yet to have complete freedom of the press and freedom of speech. And China had never enjoyed those freedoms, so Hong Kong was where Hsiaoying and many other people bought books."
[FULL  STORY]

.Huang Hua calls on Taiwanese to wake up and establish own country

Taiwan News
Date: 2019/07/09
By: Ko Lai, Taiwan News, Contributing Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – Former National Policy Adviser Huang Hua’s (黃華) hunger strike in favor of Taiwan independence entered its 52nd day Tuesday (July 9).

Huang, 80, originally only consumed 1,000 cc of fruit juice, 1,000 cc of milk, and water, but since June 2, he has only drunk water. He started his “Gandhi-style” action on May 19 in the main hall of the Taipei Railway Station.

The activist’s main aim is to give a new impetus to the movement for Taiwan self-determination and for the formation of a Republic of Taiwan. In a book titled “No Other Choice,” Huang wrote how the people of Taiwan had “no other choice” but to endure being citizens of the Qing empire, then the Japanese and the Republic of China. Huang now claims the time has come for the people of Taiwan to rise up against a similar fate and establish their own country.

He has been using a non-violent sustainable method to awaken the Taiwanese and move toward reaching his aim of an independent Taiwan. Huang also hopes that all the small pro-Taiwan political parties and social movements can band together and form a new party that can replace the Kuomintang as the main alternative to the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).
[FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2019/07/08
By: Lee Hsin-Yin

Taipei, July 8 (CNA) EVA Airways announced Monday that its flight schedule will be restored to normal from July 20, thanks to the return of its workforce after the airline and the union reached a settlement on July 6.

The strike, which started on June 20, will lead to cancellations of 2,200 flights by July 20 and affect 400,000 passengers, according to the carrier.    [FULL  STORY]

NOT GIVING IN: The Taoyuan Flight Attendants’ Union said that its strike was legal and that the law guarantees legal strikes immunity from civil and criminal liability

Taipei Times
Date:  Jul 09, 2019
By: Kao Shih-ching  /  Staff reporter

EVA Airways Corp (長榮航空) yesterday said that it has no plans to withdraw a lawsuit against the

Taoyuan Flight Attendants’ Union — despite the two sides signing an agreement to end a strike at midnight today — as it is seeking to protect its shareholders’ interests.

The airline filed the lawsuit at the Taipei District Court on June 21, saying the union had contravened the Act for Settlement of Labor-Management Disputes (勞資爭議處理法).

The union said that one of the reasons it launched the strike was the airline’s rejection of its request to employ a labor director, but such a request is not permitted under the act, EVA said as it filed the suit, adding that it would seek compensation of NT$34 million (US$1.09 million) for every day that the strike lasted.

At talks on Saturday, the union asked the airline to drop the lawsuit, but EVA declined.
[FULL  STORY]

‘JUSTICE’: Declassifying major cases and ascertaining responsibility for persecution is an important task, President Tsai Ing-wen told an exoneration ceremony in Taipei

Taipei Times
Date: Jul 08, 2019
By: Jason Pan  /  Staff reporter

President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said she would press the National Security Bureau and other

agencies to declassify major cases from the White Terror era as she presided over a ceremony in Taipei yesterday marking the exoneration of 2,006 political victims.

“We must strive to seek justice and restore historical truths,” she said at the event, which was organized by the Transitional Justice Commission to exonerate people persecuted during the White Terror era under the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) authoritarian rule.

The ceremony was held for people whose names were cleared by the commission on its third and fourth list of exoneration published on Feb. 27 and May 30.

Some of the victims attended the ceremony, while those who had died were represented by family members.    [FULL  STORY]

Kyodo News
Date: July 7, 2019

Museums in Taiwan and Japan on Sunday launched a third attempt to replicate a hypothetical human migration from Taiwan to Okinawa about 30,000 years ago.

The voyage in a dugout canoe is one of multiple research projects signed in 2017 between Taiwan's National Museum of Prehistory and Japan's National Museum of Nature and Science.

[Photo courtesy of Taiwan’s National Museum of Prehistory]

The Taiwanese museum said in a statement that five paddlers — one Taiwanese and four Japanese including a woman — aboard the 7.6-meter-long wooden canoe made in Japan set off from Taitung County, southeastern Taiwan, at 1:30 p.m.

The plan is that the paddlers will not use any modern equipment such as a compass, watch or smartphone to navigate but instead rely on the stars and wind. If all goes well, the 205-kilometer journey to Yonaguni Island in southwestern Okinawa Prefecture is estimated to take under three days, it said.

Yosuke Kaifu, leader of the Japanese team, said Japanese archaeologists have found that early humans migrated to Japan via three routes.

One is from the Korean Peninsula across the Tsushima Strait about 38,000 years ago, another is from Eurasia across the Tsugaru Strait that separates the Japanese main islands of Honshu and Hokkaido, and yet another assumes the course of the Black Stream, which begins off the Philippines and flows northeastward past Japan, about 30,000 years ago.    [FULL  STORY]

Straits Times
Date: July 7, 2019

TAIPEI (DPA) – Striking flight attendants at Taiwan's second-largest airline Eva Air reached an agreement with management late on Saturday (July 6) and announced that the strike would end on Tuesday.

The agreement was signed, with both the Ministry of Labour and Taoyuan city government, where Taiwan's international airport is located, as witnesses.

According to the Taoyuan Flight Attendants Union, the strike will end on Tuesday at midnight. No other details were available.

Lee Ying, a striking union member, told a joint news conference in Taoyuan City, in northern Taiwan, that the strike demonstrated solidarity from the 2,300 flight attendants.    [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan News
Date: 2019/07/07
By:  Central News Agency

More than 7,500 birds were culled after new cases of avian influenza were confirmed on three poultry farms in Yunlin County, the Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine (BAPHIQ) said Sunday.

Birds from two duck farms and a turkey farm in the county'sDongshi Township were found to be infected with the highly pathogenicH5N2 strain of avian flu, BAPHIQ said in a press statement.

To prevent the virus from spreading, the BAPHIQ Yunlin station culled 6,520 ducks and 1,121 turkeys from the three poultry farms and oversaw the on-site disinfection process, BAPHIQ said.

The latest finding brings the total number of poultry farmscontaminated by the virus to 35 this year, spread across the countiesof Yunlin, Changhua and Pingtung, with more than 461,000 birds culled.
[FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2019/07/07
By: Joseph Yeh

Taipei, July 7 (CNA) All five contenders for the opposition Kuomintang (KMT) nomination in the 2020 presidential election joined thousands in a rally in Taipei Sunday against what they called a significant erosion of voters' rights in recent amendments to the Referendum Act.

The five contenders — Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), Foxconn Technology Group founder Terry Gou (郭台銘), former New Taipei City Mayor Eric Chu (朱立倫), former Taipei Magistrate Chou Hsi-wei (周錫瑋) and National Taiwan University political science professor Chang Ya-chung (張亞中) — all took part in the demonstration on Ketagalan Boulevard in front of the Presidential Office.

The KMT-organized rally was held a day before party public opinion polls to pick its presidential candidate scheduled to kick off nationwide July 8-14, with the results to be released July 15.

In his address, Chu said democracy is the most precious thing for Taiwan.   [FULL  STORY]

South China Morning Post
Date: 6 Jul, 2019
By: Lawrence Chung  

A possible candidate in Taiwan’s presidential elections met the man in charge of handling the Chinese mainland’s affairs with the self-ruled island on Friday in what observers say was a calculated but daring move to show off his credentials as someone Beijing can trust.

Parts of the meeting between Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je, from the Kuomintang party, and Liu Jieyi, head of the Taiwan Affairs Office, which came at the end of Ko’s three-day visit to Shanghai, were broadcast live via Facebook.

The meeting with Liu was an important part of Ko’s trip, during which he also attended the 10th twin city forum between Taipei and Shanghai and presented himself as an alternative to the traditional mainland-friendly politicians from Taiwan’s major opposition party, the Kuomintang, observers said.

Neither of the two men mentioned the “one China” principle that Beijing insists on as the political foundation of cross-strait relations.    [FULL  STORY]