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Online events promoting democracy and human rights co-organized by Taiwan and Germany

  • Date:2021-05-11~2021-05-26
Online events promoting democracy and human rights co-organized by Taiwan and Germany

In an effort to promote democracy and human rights, the Cultural Division of the Taipei Representative Office in Germany, the Stasi Records Agency (BStU) in Berlin, and Faculty of East Asian Studies, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, will jointly sponsor a series of online events in May, marking the first implementation program since Taiwan and Germany signed a letter of intent on Dec. 12, 2019 to expand collaboration in promoting transitional justice.

At 8 pm on May 7 (Taipei time), "MAIkonzert is Yourkonzert – The TIE between Taiwan and Germany is DemokraTIE," a concert featuring classical music pieces by Mozart, Dvorak and Bartok as well as Taiwanese folk songs, directed by conductor Chih-Yin Huang-Niemand, will be presented through a livestream video on the Facebook page of the Cultural Division of the Taipei Representative Office in Germany.

With Taiwan's democratic movement over the past 30 years as the theme, the online panel discussion organized by Dr. Christine Moll-Murata of Faculty of East Asian Studies, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, will be held on May 11.

On May 14, a 53-min documentary "The Road To Freedom (人權路上)" will premiere at the Liang Kuo Shu International Conference Hall, College of Social Sciences, National Taiwan University (NTU) in Taipei. Following the screening, an online panel with simultaneous connection between Taipei and Berlin will be held, with the participation of political victims, Taiwan's representative to Germany Shieh Jhy-Wey (謝志偉), Roland Jahn, Federal Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the former GDR, and Klaus H. Walter, former Taiwan coordinator of Amnesty International.

Another online panel discussion is scheduled for May 26. The event sponsored by the Stasi Records Agency (BStU) will focus on "The role of archives in dealing with human rights violations in Germany and Taiwan (Die Rolle von Archiven bei der Aufarbeitung von Menschenrechtsverletzungen in Deutschland und Taiwan)."

Additionally, Ruhr-Universität Bochum will hold a photography exhibition featuring Taiwanese photographer Song Long-Chyuan's (宋隆泉) works which record the initial phase of Taiwan's democratic transition in the 1980s.

Cultural Division of the Taipei Representative Office in Germany indicated that, the events were originally scheduled for 2020, but it was postponed to 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, most of the events will be held virtually, except for the photography exhibition.

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