National Palace Museum director Wu Mi-cha (吳密察) yesterday said that he does not know an ideal location to store historical artifacts on the museum’s collection if a war broke out in Taiwan, but pledged to stipulate an evacuation plan within three months and hold a drill in July.
Wu attended a meeting at the Legislature’s Education and Culture Committee to brief lawmakers about the museum’s operations.
However, many lawmakers were concerned whether the museum has the personnel and protocols in place to move nearly 700,000 historical artifacts to a safe location in the event of a war, after seeing museum staff in Ukraine struggle to salvage historical objects following the Russian invasion.
Photo: CNA
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Huang Kuo-shu (黃國書) and Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Wan Mei-ling (萬美玲) asked whether the museum has selected locations to store historical artifacts, considering that staff at the Andrey Sheptytsky National Museum of Lviv, Ukraine, are having problems finding a place to store nearly 12,000 historical objects that they removed from the museum.
Wan said that the National Palace Museum needs to be prepared to evacuate historical objects in an emergency situation, adding that it would be too late if the museum waits until then to react.
Wu said the rules governing a disaster and emergency response plan at the National Palace Museum mainly prepare the staff to respond to a flood, fire or an earthquake.
While the museum has been holding drills for various emergency situations, it has yet to hold drills for a war or airstrike, he said.
“The National Palace Museum has more than 690,000 historical objects. If we were to hold a drill for a scenario of a war or an air raid, we would need to first divide the objects into different categories, simulate the packaging of these objects and safely move them to designated locations. This is no small matter,” he added.
“Evacuating historical objects is much more complicated than evacuating people, and frankly I cannot think of any place to store them at the moment. National security officials might know some very safe locations, but we do not know whether those locations can safely preserve historical objects as we do at the National Palace Museum,” Wu said.
Wu pledged to spend the next three months establishing a wartime response task force and consulting national security officials about possible storage locations for historical artifacts.
Costa Rica sent a group of intelligence officials to Taiwan for a short-term training program, the first time the Central American country has done so since the countries ended official diplomatic relations in 2007, a Costa Rican media outlet reported last week. Five officials from the Costa Rican Directorate of Intelligence and Security last month spent 23 days in Taipei undergoing a series of training sessions focused on national security, La Nacion reported on Friday, quoting unnamed sources. The Costa Rican government has not confirmed the report. The Chinese embassy in Costa Rica protested the news, saying in a statement issued the same
Taiwan’s Liu Ming-i, right, who also goes by the name Ray Liu, poses with a Chinese Taipei flag after winning the gold medal in the men’s physique 170cm competition at the International Fitness and Bodybuilding Federation Asian Championship in Ajman, United Arab Emirates, yesterday.
A year-long renovation of Taipei’s Bangka Park (艋舺公園) began yesterday, as city workers fenced off the site and cleared out belongings left by homeless residents who had been living there. Despite protests from displaced residents, a city official defended the government’s relocation efforts, saying transitional housing has been offered. The renovation of the park in Taipei’s Wanhua District (萬華), near Longshan Temple (龍山寺), began at 9am yesterday, as about 20 homeless people packed their belongings and left after being asked to move by city personnel. Among them was a 90-year-old woman surnamed Wang (王), who last week said that she had no plans
TO BE APPEALED: The environment ministry said coal reduction goals had to be reached within two months, which was against the principle of legitimate expectation The Taipei High Administrative Court on Thursday ruled in favor of the Taichung Environmental Protection Bureau in its administrative litigation against the Ministry of Environment for the rescission of a NT$18 million fine (US$609,570) imposed by the bureau on the Taichung Power Plant in 2019 for alleged excess coal power generation. The bureau in November 2019 revised what it said was a “slip of the pen” in the text of the operating permit granted to the plant — which is run by Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) — in October 2017. The permit originally read: “reduce coal use by 40 percent from Jan.
RSS