Are you going to today's protest march? Or are you going to be a couch potato and witness it at home? At this time in Taiwan's history, the citizens of our country need to step up to their responsibilities and show up at the protest. Sitting in our cozy homes watching the protest on television will not be enough. With a huge participation rate at the protest, the world will see that Taiwan's fate lies in the peaceful decisions of the peaceful Taiwanese -- in contrast to the "non-peaceful" means China has just formally authorized against Taiwan.
Statistics have shown that more than 80 percent of the Taiwanese population opposes the Anti-Secession Law. How can the Taiwanese verify the accuracy of this poll? The solution is to show up at the protest. Do not allow opinions of political parties to hinder you from attending such an important event. In fact, up to 88.1 percent of the Taiwanese population think that political parties should stop fighting each other and unite.
The protest, although put together by the pan-green camp, is not a propaganda event for the Democratic Progressive Party, but instead is a protest to reveal the dissatisfaction of Taiwan as a unified country towards the Anti-Secession Law.
Maybe you are one of the few who are still ambiguous on your opinion of the law. Why then should you attend the protest? Just think about it. The law gives China full authority to unilaterally determine the future of your homeland. Shouldn't the decision be based upon the votes of you and your neighbors who actually live in Taiwan? Or is it okay for the few elite people of the Chinese Communist government to decide your future?
Even if you are pro-"one China, two systems," you should be voicing your opinions from within Taiwan, not from across the Taiwan Strait. Joining the march does not necessarily mean you are pro-independence, it simply shows the world that you want the future of Taiwan to be decided by the Taiwanese themselves.
Many people say that businesspeople won't attend the protest. Why? Because they fear their prosperity invested in China will diminish if they go against the Chinese government.
These days, money means the world to everyone. But now, I ask the businesspeople to put aside their selfish desires and think about the well-being of the Taiwanese people as a whole. What will really benefit us? The answer is democracy and peace, which are platforms that are going to be supported at the march.
Love Taiwan? Come to today's protest march and join your fellow Taiwanese in a peaceful demonstration against the unjust Anti-Secession Law.
Show the world that the nation of Taiwan is worth supporting. Show the world that Taiwan actually cares about its future by being an active participant in the march for peace, democracy and Taiwan.
Erica Wu
Taipei
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