Taiwan Buddhist group to launch TV
station in Indonesia
Deutsche Presse-Agentur, Nov 10,
2006
Taipei, Taiwan -- A Taiwan Buddhist group plans to
launch a television station in Muslim Indonesia to encourage
Indonesians to care for poor people in their country, the group
said Friday.
'We have obtained licence from the Indonesian government to launch
a TV station which will be a branch of our Da-Ai [Big Love] TV,'
said Ke Chuan-fu, a spokesman for Da-Ai TV, run by the Tzu Chi
Foundation.
Because Indonesia bars the use of the same name, the station in
Indonesia is to be called DAI TV, Ke said.
DAI TV began a daily one-hour trial broadcast in the Indonesian
language in October and will be formally launched in February, he
said.
'In the initial stage, we will produce a four-hour programme which
will be repeated throughout the day,' Ke added. 'We will broadcast
to 20 million households in Jakarta and Medan but will later expand
our service to Surabuya and Bandung.'
To stay clear of politics, DAI TV plans to keep its news coverage
to a minimum and instead will report on Tzuchi's effort to help the
poor in Indonesia and to encourage Indonesians to help the
disadvantaged. It will also air programmes made in Taiwan but
dubbed in Indonesian.
The Tzu Chi Foundation was founded by Cheng Yen, 68, nicknamed
Taiwan's Mother Teresa, in 1966 and has tens of thousands of
members in 28 countries. It has provided cash and relief materials
to flood, earthquake and hurricane-stricken countries all over the
world and built Big Love Villages for poor people in China, Iran,
Turkey, India, Indonesia, Thailand, South Africa, El Salvador and
Paraguay.
Last year, the foundation built a Big Love Village for 3,700
families and five schools in Banda Aceh, Indonesia.
Banda Aceh was the area worst-hit in the December 26, 2004,
tsunami, which killed more than 230,000 people in 12 Indian Ocean
countries.