The Asia-Pacific office of a prestigious international human rights organization was established in Taiwan on Tuesday, with the goal of focusing on regional issues such as poverty, labor exploitation, human trafficking and racial discrimination, the Ministry of Culture said at an event in Japan on Tuesday.
The Asia-Pacific office of the Federation of International Human Rights Museums is also to serve as an important platform to create links between Taiwan and international human rights organizations, the ministry said in a statement at the International Council of Museums’ 25th general conference in Japan.
Established in 2010, the office encourages museums that engage with sensitive and controversial human rights themes to work together and share new concepts and initiatives in a supportive environment, the office’s Web site says.
Linked with the National Human Rights Museum in New Taipei City, where it is based, the office would also help promote transitional justice, heal historical scars and promote reconciliation through dialogue, the ministry said.
Such actions would serve to transform negative heritage into a legacy for modern democracy and human rights, while laying the foundations for peace, the ministry said.
The primary goals of the office are to raise awareness of regional issues such as poverty, child labor, labor exploitation, human trafficking, religious conflicts, racial discrimination and genocide, internally displaced people and cross-border refugees, migrant workers, sexual violence and discrimination against women, the ministry said.
David Fleming, founding president of the Federation of International Human Rights Museums, told the conference that Taiwan has diverse cultural and ethnic groups, and works hard to promote human rights, the ministry said.
The establishment of the office at the National Human Rights Museum would promote greater discussions about human rights in the region, the ministry quoted Fleming as saying.
The National Human Rights Museum, which was established last year, is the first of its kind in Asia built on a site where human rights abuses were carried out, according to the ministry.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods