Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/08/25
By: Lu Hsin-hui and Jay Chen

Kaohsiung, Aug. 25 (CNA) President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) donned a helmet and a bullet-proof vest Thursday as she inspected the annual Han Kuang military exercises as the commander-in-chief of Taiwan’s armed forces for the first time since taking office in May.

The president arrived at a base for joint training in southern Taiwan’s Pintung County to review a live fire drill, the most important part of the Han Kuang exercises.

A total of 143 aircraft, navy ships, tanks and artillery pieces were used in the drill, including U.S.-made Apaches and Black Hawks, which participated in the annaul exercises for the first time.     [FULL  STORY]

FRIENDLY HOST:Japanese Internet users have been collecting signatures with an online petition to have Taiwan use its own name at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics

Taipei Times
Date: Aug 27, 2016
By: Chen Yu-fu and William Hetherington / Staff reporter, with staff writer

Several civic organizations yesterday jointly called for the official title and flag of the nation’s Olympic

team to be “corrected,” saying they hope that “Taiwan” will be used at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

Taiwan participates in the Games under the name “Chinese Taipei,” with a flag depicting five rings and a plum blossom, the Republic of China’s national flower.
The flag raised during medal ceremonies at the Olympics does not represent the nation and cannot lead to the normalization of Taiwan’s national identity, the groups said, adding that it should be replaced before the Tokyo Olympics with a flag that represents Taiwan.

“At the 1960 Olympics in Rome, Taiwan attended under the title of ‘Formosa,’ but athletes marched behind a self-made banner that read ‘under protest’ at the opening ceremony. At the 1976 Olympics in Montreal, Canada, the International Olympic Committee agreed to use the name ‘Taiwan,’ but Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) flagrantly refused to send athletes to the Games,” Taiwan People News chairman Chen Yung-hsing (陳永興), who launched the campaign, told a news conference in Taipei.     [FULL  STORY]

The China Post
Date: August 27, 2016
By: Stephanie Chao

TAIPEI, Taiwan — President Tsai Ing-wen’s approval rating slid to 48.5 percent in a survey released

Friday, which showed even weaker public support for her premier.

Taiwan Think Tank’s survey showed 48.5 percent satisfaction with Tsai’s performance and a modest increase in dissatisfaction to 38.4 percent.

Compared with the preceding poll, dissatisfaction with Tsai had increased while satisfaction or neutrality had declined, said Chou Yung-hong, Taiwan Think Tank’s director of Public Opinion and Poll Center.

Taiwan Think Tank’s newest survey marked the first time that Premier Lin Chuan’s disapproval ratings (which rose 1.5 percentage points to 41.0 percent) outpaced his approval ratings (which fell 5.5 percentage points to 39.6 percent).

Poll respondents pointed to three major factors as the source of their growing dissatisfaction with Tsai’s administration: labor and holiday policy (42.1 percent), cross-strait policy (30.5 percent) and national pension reform (20.1 percent).     [FULL  STORY]

‘The apology to Taiwan’s indigenous peoples will further the cause of indigenous rights, but also signals the distinctive modern society and polity that Taiwan has become.’

The News Lens
Date: 2016/08/25
By: Mark Harrison

On Aug. 1, the new president of Taiwan, Dr. Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), offered an apology to Taiwan’s

indigenous peoples. In the presidential building, the apology began with a rite of offering of millet and spirits. Bunun community elder Hu Jin-niang (胡金娘) blessed the ceremony, and Taiwanese religious leaders followed with an interfaith prayer. In Tsai’s speech, she said:

Let me put in simple terms why we are apologising to the indigenous peoples. Four hundred years ago, there were already people living in Taiwan. These first inhabitants lived their lives and had their own languages, cultures, customs, and domains. But then, without their consent, another group of people arrived on these shores, and in the course of history, took everything from the first inhabitants who, on the land they have known most intimately, became displaced, foreign, non-mainstream, and marginalized.

The apology to Taiwan’s indigenous peoples comes as the culmination of many decades of political and legal activism. A modern indigenous rights movement began in the 1980s, in the final years of Taiwan’s authoritarian era from 1945 to 1987 under the Kuomintang (KMT). Activists campaigned on many specific issues, such as the cultural stereotyping of indigenous peoples in school curricula, the nuclear waste site on Orchid Island, home of the Yami people, and the expropriation of the traditional lands of the Taroko people by the Asia Cement Corporation. They also campaigned for legal and constitutional changes to protect and support indigenous rights. In 1994, Taiwan’s legislative assembly passed constitutional amendments that accorded Taiwan’s indigenous people specific protections under law and, in response to a long and vociferous campaign, institutionalized the term in Chinese 原住民 to refer to indigenous peoples, instead of the prevailing pejorative terms 山胞 and 山地人.     [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/08/25
By: Chen Chih-chung and Y.F. Low

Taipei, Aug. 25 (CNA) Taiwan will significantly increase scholarship opportunities to attract students from Southeast Asia and India as part of the government’s “New Southbound Policy,” the Ministry of Education announced Thursday.

Starting in 2017, the Taiwan Scholarship program will offer 182 openings for students from Southeast Asia and India per year, up from 97 at present, Deputy Minister of Education Chen Liang-gee (陳良基) told a news conference.

Each student will be awarded NT$400,000 per year under the program.

In addition, the scholarship openings for economically disadvantaged ethnic Chinese students from Southeast Asia will be increased by 700 per year, with each student to be awarded NT$36,000 per year, Chen said.     [FULL  STORY]

Taipei Times
Date: Aug 26, 2016
By: Abraham Gerber / Staff reporter

Conflict broke out at a government forum on plans to implement a five-day workweek, after several

protesters confronted Deputy Minister of Labor Kuo Kuo-wen (郭國文) accusing him of “bullshit.”

The forum quickly descended into a shouting match after about 10 members of the Workers’ Struggle Alliance took the floor, surrounding Kuo and demanding that he accept a poster describing him as a “bullshit deputy minister [who is a] killer of workers.”

“There has been too much time wasted with you doing all the talking, refusing to let workers voice [their concerns}, alliance member Lu Chyi-horng (盧其宏) said. “Don’t you know that most low-level workers are not allowed to take their yearly vacation days and cutting national holidays will harm their rights?”

Forum tables were pushed aside as protesters repeatedly pressed against Kuo, repeatedly interrupting his calls for dialogue with a blister of angry shouting.     [FULL  STORY]

The China Post
Date: August 26, 2016
By: Joseph Yeh

TAIPEI, Taiwan — President Tsai-Ing-wen Thursday called on the Defense Ministry to develop a new defense strategy for the nation’s armed forces during her first inspection tour to the annual Han Kuang military exercises in Pingtung.

During an address she delivered after presiding over the Lien Yung Drill (聯勇操演), Tsai said she had ordered the military to draft a revolutionary defense strategy before the end of January 2017.

“This new strategy requires the input of every military official and an innovative mindset to collaborate in building a new armed forces,” Tsai said.

Tsai did not disclose more details of the new defense strategy.

According to the United Evening News, as part of the new strategy, each military branch will be required to produce a precise figure on how many troops it needs to maintain combat readiness, as the nation’s armed forces are downsizing and transitioning to an all-voluntary force.     [FULL  STORY]

For years the DPP blamed the KMT for stalled efforts to legalize same-sex marriage in Taiwan. Now in control of both the executive and legislative branches of government, the DPP has no valid argument for further delays.

 

The News Lens
Date: 2016/08/24
By: J. Michael Cole

Following Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) victory in the Jan. 16 general elections, many human rights observers in Taiwan and abroad cherished the possibility that Taiwan could become the first country in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage. To distinguish itself from the more conservative Kuomintang (KMT) in the lead-up to the elections, Tsai’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) made this subject a component of its platform, and a large contingent of party members were instructed to take part in last year’s LGBT Pride Parade in Taipei.

For years, and despite the unflagging dedication of a number of DPP legislators like Yu Mei-nu (尤美女), moves to legalize same-sex unions in Taiwan were ostensibly blocked by the KMT, which had control of both the executive and legislative branches of government, and a small albeit vocal, connected and resourceful group of conservative Christians.

Following the DPP’s victory in the presidential and legislative elections on Jan. 16, the way seemed finally clear to pass the necessary legislation and make Taiwan a true leader in LGBT and human rights in Asia. In the dozens of interviews that I gave to international media before, during and after the elections, the possibility of legalization was a question that I was asked again and again.     [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan News
Date: 2016-08-24
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – Vice President Chen Chien-jen will travel to the Vatican from September 2 to 8 to attend the canonization of Mother Theresa, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced Wednesday.

The Vatican is Taiwan’s only diplomatic ally in Europe out of a total of 22 allies.

In keeping with the government’s tradition of giving overseas travels by presidents and vice presidents a special moniker, Deputy Foreign Minister Wu Chih-chung said Chen’s trip would be dubbed “Holy Peace.”

Wu emphasized that relations between the Republic of China and the Holy See had existed for 74 years, while Mother Theresa visited Taiwan in 1985. President Tsai Ing-wen had picked Chen, a practicing Catholic, as her special envoy to the September 4 ceremony which would see her become a saint, Wu said. The vice president will take the wishes of the country and of its Catholic community to Pope Francis.     [FULL  STORY]