Feb. 28 must be one of the days marked on President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) calendar as days on which he must speak carefully and, perhaps, apologize as president and Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman, for all the wrong reasons — such as the 228 Massacre being “people rebelling against misgovernment.”
It is easy to imagine Ma breathing a sigh of relief when March comes around, since he can then ignore calls for the government and his party to seek the truth behind the ruthless massacre and to apologize for the right reasons for at least another year.
Not so fast.
March 8 — which was also International Women’s Day — marked the anniversary of the beginning of the “March Crackdown,” which has been described as the second, although most important, part of the massacre.
On March 8, 1947, the Nationalist Army’s 21st Division arrived in Keelung and began shelling the port and shooting at residents even before landing. During the next three months, Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) troops scoured the island and wiped out an entire generation of Taiwanese elites.
For many victims and their families, it is a date they can never forget, and so it should be for the government and the KMT.
However, the Ma administration could not care less about the facts, instead pretending that the crackdown never took place.
Marches involving tens of thousands people on that day — Saturday this year — in cities around Taiwan have given March 8 another meaning: marking opposition to the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in Gongliao District (貢寮), New Taipei City.
For the third year since Japan’s 2011 Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant accident, Taiwanese are asking the government to not only suspend the construction of the Gongliao plant, but phase out nuclear power altogether, citing the potential of a nuclear disaster in earthquake-prone Taiwan and the incompetence of Taiwan Power Co (Taipower).
The Ma administration has said that while nuclear safety is crucial, the concerns of the nuclear skeptics have never been an issue and Taiwan must have atomic energy.
A different group took to the streets on Sunday, one day before the annual Tibetan Uprising Day, to commemorate Tibetan resistance against a Chinese invasion in 1959 and to raise awareness that Chinese suppression of Tibetan culture and religion remains ongoing.
Supporters of the democratic movements in Tibet and East Turkestan, now known as the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region in China, have always had a strong presence in Taiwan because they feel that the three places share similar histories of Chinese oppression and exist under the same threat from the Chinese Communist Party.
That is why these supporters hoped that Taiwan, as a beacon of democracy in Asia, would advocate human rights and the right of self-determination more than any other country in the world.
However, the Ma administration has never shown support for the movements in Tibet and East Turkestan. Nor has it addressed the issues with Beijing during the past six years of “significantly relaxed” cross-strait relations — despite more than 100 Tibetans having committed suicide by setting themselves on fire over the past two years.
A well-known Chinese poem written during the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 described the authoritarian Chinese regime like this: “Cover your eyes so you think you would not see. Cover your ears so you think you would not hear.”
Unfortunately, the verses also describe the Ma administration, which assumes that the will of Taiwanese will eventually run out and falter if the government keeps ignoring it.
Hopefully, Taiwanese will prove the Ma administration wrong.
Saudi Arabian largesse is flooding Egypt’s cultural scene, but the reception is mixed. Some welcome new “cooperation” between two regional powerhouses, while others fear a hostile takeover by Riyadh. In Cairo, historically the cultural capital of the Arab world, Egyptian Minister of Culture Nevine al-Kilany recently hosted Saudi Arabian General Entertainment Authority chairman Turki al-Sheikh. The deep-pocketed al-Sheikh has emerged as a Medici-like patron for Egypt’s cultural elite, courted by Cairo’s top talent to produce a slew of forthcoming films. A new three-way agreement between al-Sheikh, Kilany and United Media Services — a multi-media conglomerate linked to state intelligence that owns much of
The US and other countries should take concrete steps to confront the threats from Beijing to avoid war, US Representative Mario Diaz-Balart said in an interview with Voice of America on March 13. The US should use “every diplomatic economic tool at our disposal to treat China as what it is... to avoid war,” Diaz-Balart said. Giving an example of what the US could do, he said that it has to be more aggressive in its military sales to Taiwan. Actions by cross-party US lawmakers in the past few years such as meeting with Taiwanese officials in Washington and Taipei, and
The Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan has no official diplomatic allies in the EU. With the exception of the Vatican, it has no official allies in Europe at all. This does not prevent the ROC — Taiwan — from having close relations with EU member states and other European countries. The exact nature of the relationship does bear revisiting, if only to clarify what is a very complicated and sensitive idea, the details of which leave considerable room for misunderstanding, misrepresentation and disagreement. Only this week, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) received members of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations
Denmark’s “one China” policy more and more resembles Beijing’s “one China” principle. At least, this is how things appear. In recent interactions with the Danish state, such as applying for residency permits, a Taiwanese’s nationality would be listed as “China.” That designation occurs for a Taiwanese student coming to Denmark or a Danish citizen arriving in Denmark with, for example, their Taiwanese partner. Details of this were published on Sunday in an article in the Danish daily Berlingske written by Alexander Sjoberg and Tobias Reinwald. The pretext for this new practice is that Denmark does not recognize Taiwan as a state under