Tomorrow's "March for Democracy and Peace to Protect Taiwan" in Taipei City was initiated by neither the government nor a political party. It is a public event uniting all of Taiwan's people, regardless of ethnicity, sex, age, place of birth or political affiliation.
DPP Legislator Lin Cho-shui (
The Taipei Society, long a mouthpiece for Taiwan's democratization, has also discouraged Chen and Hsieh from taking a major role in the march. The society believes their participation would change the nature of the rally and undermine its value as a civilian action.
Chen yesterday announced that he would take his family to the rally, but stressed that he will march as one of the crowd and not make any speeches. The rally, which hopes to attract 1 million participants to express their anger over the "Anti-Secession" Law, will therefore include the families of both the president and premier. But their presence will not make the rally a government-organized event. That they will march in silence and not make any public pronouncements is an indication of Taiwan's restraint. That this is the first time that the president will take part in a rally as a part of the crowd, is a forceful gesture, but one that also reflects restraint.
By not usurping the "unofficial" nature of the rally with his official presence, Chen will calm domestic and international concerns. His role in the rally will serve as a compromise.
Over the last few days the Democracy, Peace and Defend Taiwan Alliance (
As the march is in the collective interest of all Taiwanese, it's necessary to show a united front. But the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) instead chose to hold a separate rally last Saturday. Moreover, KMT Deputy Chairman Chiang Pin-kun (
The KMT deserves reproach for putting party interests ahead of the national interest.
Additionally, Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou's (馬英九) refusal to grant permission for the rally -- on security concerns about Ketagalan Boulevard, where the march is to end -- marks yet another political blunder on his part. The Taipei City Government just allowed, last weekend, a march terminating at the very same spot. This is nothing but political game-playing. Even if the scale of this march raises concerns about whether city police can maintain order, Taipei City should simply ask the central government for support.
The international community has responded emphatically to China's enactment of the "Anti-Secession" Law. This gives even more reason for Taiwan to stand up and say "no" to China. Of the options available for Taiwan to respond to China, a protest march is the most direct, but also the one least likely to be perceived as changing the status quo.
The number of participants who join the protest matters. In 2003 Hong Kong, 500,000 people took to the streets to protest legislation based on Article 23 of the territory's Basic Law, shocking Beijing and the international community.
If tomorrow's rally can attract over 1 million people, the expression of public sentiment would be on par with a referendum. But if only a limited number turn out, the international community might mistakenly take this to mean that Taiwan tacitly accepts the "Anti-Secession" Law, and simply sit back to watch developments.
For the benefit of everyone in Taiwan, make your voice heard tomorrow.
Chinese agents often target Taiwanese officials who are motivated by financial gain rather than ideology, while people who are found guilty of spying face lenient punishments in Taiwan, a researcher said on Tuesday. While the law says that foreign agents can be sentenced to death, people who are convicted of spying for Beijing often serve less than nine months in prison because Taiwan does not formally recognize China as a foreign nation, Institute for National Defense and Security Research fellow Su Tzu-yun (蘇紫雲) said. Many officials and military personnel sell information to China believing it to be of little value, unaware that
Before 1945, the most widely spoken language in Taiwan was Tai-gi (also known as Taiwanese, Taiwanese Hokkien or Hoklo). However, due to almost a century of language repression policies, many Taiwanese believe that Tai-gi is at risk of disappearing. To understand this crisis, I interviewed academics and activists about Taiwan’s history of language repression, the major challenges of revitalizing Tai-gi and their policy recommendations. Although Taiwanese were pressured to speak Japanese when Taiwan became a Japanese colony in 1895, most managed to keep their heritage languages alive in their homes. However, starting in 1949, when the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) enacted martial law
“Si ambulat loquitur tetrissitatque sicut anas, anas est” is, in customary international law, the three-part test of anatine ambulation, articulation and tetrissitation. And it is essential to Taiwan’s existence. Apocryphally, it can be traced as far back as Suetonius (蘇埃托尼烏斯) in late first-century Rome. Alas, Suetonius was only talking about ducks (anas). But this self-evident principle was codified as a four-part test at the Montevideo Convention in 1934, to which the United States is a party. Article One: “The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: a) a permanent population; b) a defined territory; c) government;
The central bank and the US Department of the Treasury on Friday issued a joint statement that both sides agreed to avoid currency manipulation and the use of exchange rates to gain a competitive advantage, and would only intervene in foreign-exchange markets to combat excess volatility and disorderly movements. The central bank also agreed to disclose its foreign-exchange intervention amounts quarterly rather than every six months, starting from next month. It emphasized that the joint statement is unrelated to tariff negotiations between Taipei and Washington, and that the US never requested the appreciation of the New Taiwan dollar during the
RSS