Following an attack on a long-time environmentalist Chen Jiau-hua (陳椒華) — allegedly for her participation in a campaign against a local garbage dump in Dongshan District (東山), Greater Tainan City — representatives from several environmental groups yesterday condemned violence and urged the government to deal with the case immediately.
“The attack on Chen shows the government’s incapabilities,” Taiwan Hsinchu Foundation chairman Sam Lin (林聖崇) told a press conference in Taipei. “Obviously, the government is incapable of protecting its citizens and it’s also incapable of protecting the environment.”
“If the government did a good job protecting the environment, then citizens like us would not have to risk our lives to campaign for environmental issues,” he said.
Lin said that if the government does not find out who committed the crime against Chen and who was behind the attack, “the government would be an accomplice.”
Chen, an associate professor at Chianan University of Pharmacy and Science and a long-time environmental campaigner, was beaten by two men with sticks on Monday night when she was getting into her car after leaving the Taiwan Environmental Protection Union’s (TEPU) Tainan office, she said.
The two men ran away when people in the neighborhood and her colleagues came out to see what was happening after they heard Chen screaming and honking her car horn, she said.
“I’m not afraid, I just feel sorry for the worry I’m putting my family and friends through,” Chen told the press conference. “This is not the first time something like this has happened — the tires on my car have been stabbed twice before, we’ve seen people in black walking around the TEPU’s Tainan office, I’ve received silent phone calls at night and former TEPU Tainan director Huang An-tiao (黃安調) was attacked near his house last year and we still don’t know who did that.”
Several other environmental activists — including Wild at Heart Legal Defense Foundation chairman Robin Winkler (文魯彬), the foundation’s secretary-general Lin Tzu-lin (林子凌), Green Party Taiwan spokesman Pan Han-shen (潘翰聲) and TEPU president Wang Chun-shou (王俊秀) — also claimed to have been either physically attacked or verbally threatened on several occasions.
“Environmental groups speak up for the environment because the environment cannot speak up for itself,” Homemakers’ Union Foundation for Environmental Protection chairwoman Chen Man-li (陳曼麗) said. “One day, when the environment has had enough and it decides to fight back, we are all going to be the victims.”
She said that should the physical and verbal attacks continue to happen to environmentalists, “one day, there may be no one who dares to come out and speak up for the environment and that would be a tragedy.”
Dozens of environmental activists marched to the Ministry of the Interior after the press conference to urge the ministry to intervene effectively.
Criminal Investigation Bureau Deputy-Director Lin Kun-huang (林昆煌) received the activists and promised to put in the maximum effort to solve the case.
“We’ve formed a special task force with local police in Tainan and we’re working very hard on it,” Lin said.
The environmentalists said Chen may have been attacked because of her involvement in a 10-year campaign against a garbage dump project run by Young Yang Environmental Industry Corp.
Local residents are worried that the planned garbage dump’s proximity to Wushantou Reservoir (烏山頭水庫) may pollute the water.
National Kaohsiung University of Science and Technology (NKUST) yesterday promised it would increase oversight of use of Chinese in course materials, following a social media outcry over instances of simplified Chinese characters being used, including in a final exam. People on Threads wrote that simplified Chinese characters were used on a final exam and in a textbook for a translation course at the university, while the business card of a professor bore the words: “Taiwan Province, China.” Photographs of the exam, the textbook and the business card were posted with the comments. NKUST said that other members of the faculty did not see
The Taipei City Government yesterday said contractors organizing its New Year’s Eve celebrations would be held responsible after a jumbo screen played a Beijing-ran television channel near the event’s end. An image showing China Central Television (CCTV) Channel 3 being displayed was posted on the social media platform Threads, sparking an outcry on the Internet over Beijing’s alleged political infiltration of the municipal government. A Taipei Department of Information and Tourism spokesman said event workers had made a “grave mistake” and that the Television Broadcasts Satellite (TVBS) group had the contract to operate the screens. The city would apply contractual penalties on TVBS
A new board game set against the backdrop of armed conflict around Taiwan is to be released next month, amid renewed threats from Beijing, inviting players to participate in an imaginary Chinese invasion 20 years from now. China has ramped up military activity close to Taiwan in the past few years, including massing naval forces around the nation. The game, titled 2045, tasks players with navigating the troubles of war using colorful action cards and role-playing as characters involved in operations 10 days before a fictional Chinese invasion of Taiwan. That includes members of the armed forces, Chinese sleeper agents and pro-China politicians
The lowest temperature in a low-lying area recorded early yesterday morning was in Miaoli County’s Gongguan Township (公館), at 6.8°C, due to a strong cold air mass and the effect of radiative cooling, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. In other areas, Chiayi’s East District (東區) recorded a low of 8.2°C and Yunlin County’s Huwei Township (虎尾) recorded 8.5°C, CWA data showed. The cold air mass was at its strongest from Saturday night to the early hours of yesterday. It brought temperatures down to 9°C to 11°C in areas across the nation and the outlying Kinmen and Lienchiang (Matsu) counties,
RSS