Eighteen US-based Taiwanese-American organizations issued a joint statement yesterday accusing the government of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) of sacrificing Taiwan’s democracy and human rights to cater to China during last week’s visit by Association for Relations Across the Strait Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林).
“In an attempt to kiss up to Beijing, the Ma administration prohibited public display of [Republic of China items] on the streets. It was a dark moment in Taiwan’s democracy,” Central News Agency (CNA) quoted the statement as saying.
Taiwanese Association of America chairman Ron Hsieh (謝榮峻) said that almost all Taiwanese-American organizations felt “extreme sadness, worry and anger” at Ma’s handling of the visit, which he said had caused much social disharmony in Taiwan.
The statement said that to welcome the Chinese Communist Party representative, the Ma administration not only stripped the people of their right to wave their country’s flag, play Taiwanese songs and wear whatever they choose to wear, it also mobilized more than 7,000 police officers to secure the safety of one person.
Barbed wire was erected, people waving Tibetan flags were apprehended and applications to stage a protest were denied — all actions, the statement said, that were undertaken by the Ma administration to “make Chen feel like a revered guest.”
“Taiwan has become a police state as can only exist in a totalitarian regime,” the CNA report quoted the statement as saying, adding that Taiwan’s hard-won democracy and rule of law, realized through blood and tears, were all destroyed in just a few short days.
All Taiwanese, the statement added, must stand in solidarity. The US-based Taiwanese groups promised to urge the mainstream US media, political sector and academics to take notice of Taiwan’s recent regression and to publicly support its democracy in international settings.
The organizations that signed the statement also include the Formosan Association for Public Affairs, the North American Taiwan Professors’ Association, the World Taiwanese Congress and the Taiwan Association for Human Rights.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
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