The government’s efforts to contain COVID-19 have seen schools opening late amid public warnings against visiting crowded places, and some people have called for major events to be postponed or canceled to prevent infection.
The annual Dajia Matsu Pilgrimage (大甲媽祖遶境) has become a topic of debate, as the nine-day procession attracts more than 1 million people.
People who participate in the pilgrimage usually travel together in close proximity and interact with businesses and other establishments along the way.
It often attracts older people, who are more susceptible to the virus.
Scheduled to begin on March 19, it is the largest religious event in Taiwan and the cost of postponing it would be drastic on many fronts.
Unlike pushing back a trade show, religious events lose much of their significance if they are held on an arbitrary date.
However, nothing can be worse than causing a new wave of infection, which has been reasonably contained in Taiwan.
Event organizers and the government can make all the restrictions and take all the precautions they want, but it would be almost impossible to have such a large number of people follow the rules, especially in the moment of religious fervor as they scramble to get under the palanquin.
Officials are even struggling to get people who are under self-quarantine to follow the rules. Unfortunately, that is just human nature. It is much safer not to take the risk at all.
The controversy over the pilgrimage erupted after Yen Ching-piao (顏清標), chairman of Jenn Lann Temple (鎮瀾宮), which organizes the pilgrimage, vowed not to cancel the procession and said: “Matsu will protect us.”
However, while the spotlight has been on the pilgrimage, it is only one of numerous Matsu processions in the nation. Many temples have canceled or downsized their processions, but others said they would press on.
For example, the Taoyuan Longde Temple launched an eight-day procession on Saturday and Taoyuan Mayor Cheng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) was criticized for attending the packed opening ceremony — without a mask — and promoting the event on social media.
Cheng yesterday said that he would not attend a ceremony to be held by the procession today and called for Taoyuan’s major temples to postpone processions, and for any large events to follow the Centers for Disease Control’s advisory measures.
This should have been done last week and the pilgrimage probably should have been postponed.
Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) yesterday said that “Matsu would prioritize the health of our people,” adding that he had told Minister of the Interior Hsu Kuo-yung (徐國勇) to ask the organizers to postpone the event.
Hsu called for large-scale events to draw up plans for deferrals, while Yen and his associates visited other participating temples to discuss whether to continue with the procession.
Hopefully they will make the right call.
However, the spotlight should not be only on Dajia. Other events, while much smaller in scale, can be just as dangerous, and attendees and organizers should exercise common sense.
Taiwan stands at the epicenter of a seismic shift that will determine the Indo-Pacific’s future security architecture. Whether deterrence prevails or collapses will reverberate far beyond the Taiwan Strait, fundamentally reshaping global power dynamics. The stakes could not be higher. Today, Taipei confronts an unprecedented convergence of threats from an increasingly muscular China that has intensified its multidimensional pressure campaign. Beijing’s strategy is comprehensive: military intimidation, diplomatic isolation, economic coercion, and sophisticated influence operations designed to fracture Taiwan’s democratic society from within. This challenge is magnified by Taiwan’s internal political divisions, which extend to fundamental questions about the island’s identity and future
The narrative surrounding Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s attendance at last week’s Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit — where he held hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin and chatted amiably with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) — was widely framed as a signal of Modi distancing himself from the US and edging closer to regional autocrats. It was depicted as Modi reacting to the levying of high US tariffs, burying the hatchet over border disputes with China, and heralding less engagement with the Quadrilateral Security dialogue (Quad) composed of the US, India, Japan and Australia. With Modi in China for the
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has postponed its chairperson candidate registration for two weeks, and so far, nine people have announced their intention to run for chairperson, the most on record, with more expected to announce their campaign in the final days. On the evening of Aug. 23, shortly after seven KMT lawmakers survived recall votes, KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) announced he would step down and urged Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) to step in and lead the party back to power. Lu immediately ruled herself out the following day, leaving the subject in question. In the days that followed, several
The Jamestown Foundation last week published an article exposing Beijing’s oil rigs and other potential dual-use platforms in waters near Pratas Island (Dongsha Island, 東沙島). China’s activities there resembled what they did in the East China Sea, inside the exclusive economic zones of Japan and South Korea, as well as with other South China Sea claimants. However, the most surprising element of the report was that the authors’ government contacts and Jamestown’s own evinced little awareness of China’s activities. That Beijing’s testing of Taiwanese (and its allies) situational awareness seemingly went unnoticed strongly suggests the need for more intelligence. Taiwan’s naval
RSS