National Taiwan University (NTU) said yesterday it would apologize to philosophy professors who were accused of being leftists and fired in 1974.
NTU president Chen Wei-jao (
Chen said the university will send a formal letter to the victims and their families as an apology.
The university said it would welcome those professors to resume their teaching jobs at NTU. Those who do not want to go back to the university will receive NT$60,000 in compensation, Chen said.
Thirteen professors were forced to give up their teaching jobs at that time. Four decided to return to NTU and nine did not.
"This is the most unfortunate incident since NTU was founded. The school authorities felt sorry that political powers intervened in the university. Some did not tell the truth and even framed their colleagues as leftists, over which we feel deep regret," Chen said in a statement released at the press conference.
Ko Ching-ming (柯慶明), one member of the investigation committee set up by the NTU to piece together the truth, recounted the course of the incident at the press conference and said the belated justice demonstrated that academic freedom and loyalty to knowledge do exist.
Ko said that during the 1970s, when tensions arose over ownership of a small group of uninhabited islands northeast of Taiwan -- the Tiaoyutai, or Senkaku, islands, have long been a conflict between Taiwan, China and Japan, each of whom claim them as part of their territory.
The feud neared violence on a number of occasions since 1969, when the UN Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East reported possible hydrocarbon deposits under the islands.
The dispute stoked both nationalist sentiment and prompted cries for peace from several professors in NTU's philosophy department. As students became increasingly boisterous, the authorities ultimately forced the university to close its philosophy department and fire those professors who had been stirring the students to protest.
Ko said the tragedy was manipulated by "certain people with ulterior motives" to frame some professors and students.
According to Ko, former New Party legislator Elmer Fung (馮滬祥), then a philosophy graduate student, was one of the accomplices who instigated the incident under the Taiwan Garrison Command.
Chen Ku-ying (陳鼓應), a philosophy professor who was persecuted in the incident, said he was happy to see the victims' names cleared and appreciated Chen Wei-jao's courage to restore the truth.
He also said that then-KMT secretary-general Chiang Yang-shih (
A decision to describe a Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement on Singapore’s Taiwan policy as “erroneous” was made because the city-state has its own “one China policy” and has not followed Beijing’s “one China principle,” Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tien Chung-kwang (田中光) said yesterday. It has been a longstanding practice for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to speak on other countries’ behalf concerning Taiwan, Tien said. The latest example was a statement issued by the PRC after a meeting between Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on the sidelines of the APEC summit
The Taipei Zoo on Saturday said it would pursue legal action against a man who was filmed climbing over a railing to tease and feed spotted hyenas in their enclosure earlier that day. In videos uploaded to social media on Saturday, a man can be seen climbing over a protective railing and approaching a ledge above the zoo’s spotted hyena enclosure, before dropping unidentified objects down to two of the animals. The Taipei Zoo in a statement said the man’s actions were “extremely inappropriate and even illegal.” In addition to monitoring the hyenas’ health, the zoo would collect evidence provided by the public
A road safety advocacy group yesterday called for reforms to the driver licensing and retraining system after a pedestrian was killed and 15 other people were injured in a two-bus collision in Taipei. “Taiwan’s driver’s licenses are among the easiest to obtain in the world, and there is no mandatory retraining system for drivers,” Taiwan Vision Zero Alliance, a group pushing to reduce pedestrian fatalities, said in a news release. Under the regulations, people who have held a standard car driver’s license for two years and have completed a driver training course are eligible to take a test
Taiwan’s passport ranked 34th in the world, with access to 141 visa-free destinations, according to the latest update to the Henley Passport Index released today. The index put together by Henley & Partners ranks 199 passports globally based on the number of destinations holders can access without a visa out of 227, and is updated monthly. The 141 visa-free destinations for Taiwanese passport holders are a slight decrease from last year, when holders had access to 145 destinations. Botswana and Columbia are among the countries that have recently ended visa-free status for Taiwanese after “bowing to pressure from the Chinese government,” the Ministry
RSS