Wang Dan (王丹), a prominent Tiananmen Square student leader who is currently a visiting associate professor in Taiwan, was nearly stabbed by a woman with a fruit knife while giving a lecture.
At about noon on Thursday, a woman believed to be in her early 30s barged into his classroom at National Tsing Hua University in Hsinchu. She took out a knife and reportedly attempted to stab Wang, who was delivering a lecture on the history of the People’s Republic of China to a small group of students.
Struggling with the woman, Wang succeeded in seizing the knife before she could injure him.
“Her storming into the room left me no time to feel scared. I could only catch her and snatch the knife from her hand. It was an instinctive reaction,” Wang said.
Recalling the incident yesterday, Wang, who has experienced a number of politically volatile situations, said this was the first time he faced what looked like an attempt on his life.
Wang said he did not know the woman, he said has harassed him for three years.
About two years ago, Wang contacted police after the woman sent him threatening letters, but the authorities did not indict her, as she appeared to be a psychiatric patient, he said.
Wang said he did not seek police assistance even after the woman started showing up in his classroom or when he was attending public events accusing him of sending people to beat her.
Despite feeling deeply disturbed by the long series of incidents, Wang said he never expected the situation would degenerate into an attack on his person.
Although he is unable to file a lawsuit against the woman because she is mentally ill, Wang said he was considering canceling some public appearances.
The woman is now receiving psychiatric treatment, Wang said, adding that he might request police protection as she could attack him again if released.
Wang’s position at Tsing Hua is his second in Taiwan after he obtained his doctorate in history from Harvard University in 2008.
From September last year to February, Wang was a visiting associate professor teaching “the comparative study of state violence in the 1950s between Taiwan and China” at National Chengchi University in Taipei.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the