Taichung Mayor Jason Hu (胡志強) yesterday dismissed the idea of establishing a protest zone during upcoming high-level cross-strait talks in the city as “premature,” saying it would be unconstitutional to deprive people of the right to assemble outside a designated area.
“It is strange to set up a place like that when no protest application has been filed. Such thinking is very premature,” he said. “It is like when you invite somebody to dinner. The guest must accept the invitation first. And if the city wanted protesters to stage demonstrations at a designated area, they might not want to do it there. Do you want me to violate the Constitution and strip people of their right to assemble and parade?”
Hu made the remarks in response to media inquiries about a Chinese-language United Daily News report yesterday that quoted Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) spokesman Maa Shaw-chang (馬紹章) as saying that the Taichung City Government would set up a protest zone for the upcoming meeting. The report said the area would be 30,000 pings (nearly 100,000m2) and free to enter.
On Nov. 24, Hu promised to find a protest area that would satisfy the needs of all involved and at the same time ensure public safety. SEF Secretary-General Kao Koong-lian (高孔廉) said on Nov. 25 that there would be an area set up where different opinions would be expressed.
Maa mentioned on Wednesday that there would be a kind of “opinion plaza” where no admission would be required for the public to have their voices heard.
Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Chairwoman Lai Shin-yuan (賴幸媛) yesterday said she agreed with Hu’s new stance because it did not make sense to prohibit protesters from staging demonstrations outside a certain area.
Lai said that the government respected freedom of speech and would protect this right in accordance with the law.
She said she believed the government agency supervising the implementation of the Assembly and Parade Act (集會遊行法) would allow protesters to fully express their opinions. She also supported and trusted the professionalism of the law enforcement offices, she said.
“If necessary, we will recommend that the supervisory agency of the Assembly and Parade Act negotiate with civic groups so they can gather and protest freely,” she said.
Lai said she did not know anything about a protest zone nor was she certain who proposed the idea. She said that she did not think it made sense to set up such an area before applications to protest were filed.
MAC Deputy Minister Liu Te-shun (劉德勳) said the Taichung City Government never promised to, nor could it, set up the zone because it would violate the Assembly and Parade Act. However, the city could offer assistance, including negotiating the route, area, time and scale of a protest after applications are filed.
Meanwhile, Council of Agriculture Deputy Minister Hu Sing-hwa (胡興華) yesterday said the agreement on quality checks of agricultural products that the two sides of the Taiwan Strait seek to sign during the meeting was just a “principle accord” and would not affect the 830 agricultural products banned from importation from China.
The two sides will address four issues in the next round of cross-strait negotiations: fishing industry cooperation, quality checks of agricultural products, cross-strait cooperation on inspection and certification and the prevention of double taxation.
Kao is scheduled to lead a delegation to Fuzhou, China, on Thursday next week for preparatory negotiations on the four agreements.
The delegation will arrange the details of SEF Chairman Chiang Pin-kung’s (江丙坤) meeting with his Chinese counterpart, Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林), icluding the date, location and schedule.
CREDIT-GRABBER: China said its coast guard rescued the crew of a fishing vessel that caught fire, who were actually rescued by a nearby Taiwanese boat and the CGA Maritime search and rescue operations do not have borders, and China should not use a shipwreck to infringe upon Taiwanese sovereignty, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said yesterday. The coast guard made the statement in response to the China Coast Guard (CCG) saying it saved a Taiwanese fishing boat. The Chuan Yu No. 6 (全漁6號), a fishing vessel registered in Keelung, on Thursday caught fire and sank in waters northeast of Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台). The vessel left Keelung’s Badouzih Fishing Harbor (八斗子漁港) at 3:35pm on Sunday last week, with seven people on board — a 62-year-old Taiwanese captain surnamed Chang (張) and six
RISKY BUSINESS: The ‘incentives’ include initiatives that get suspended for no reason, creating uncertainty and resulting in considerable losses for Taiwanese, the MAC said China’s “incentives” failed to sway sentiment in Taiwan, as willingness to work in China hit a record low of 1.6 percent, a Ministry of Labor survey showed. The Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) also reported that the number of Taiwanese workers in China has nearly halved from a peak of 430,000 in 2012 to an estimated 231,000 in 2024. That marked a new low in the proportion of Taiwanese going abroad to work. The ministry’s annual survey on “Labor Life and Employment Status” includes questions respondents’ willingness to seek employment overseas. Willingness to work in China has steadily declined from
The Legislative Yuan’s Finance Committee yesterday approved proposed amendments to the Amusement Tax Act (娛樂稅法) that would abolish taxes on films, cultural activities and competitive sporting events, retaining the fee only for dance halls and golf courses. The proposed changes would set the maximum tax rate for dance halls and golf courses at 50 and 20 percent respectively, with local governments authorized to suspend the levies. Article 2 of the act says that “amusement tax shall be levied on tickets sold or fees charged by amusement places, facilities or activities” in six categories: “Cinema; professional singing, story-telling, dancing, circus, magic show, acrobatics
INFLATION UP? The IMF said CPI would increase to 1.5 percent this year, while the DGBAS projected it would rise to 1.68 percent, with GDP per capita of US$44,181 The IMF projected Taiwan’s real GDP would grow 5.2 percent this year, up from its 2.1 percent outlook in January, despite fears of global economic disruptions sparked by the US-Iran conflict. Taiwan’s consumer price index (CPI) is projected to increase to 1.5 percent, while unemployment would be 3.4 percent, roughly in line with estimates for Asia as a whole, the international body wrote in its Global Economic Outlook Report published in the US on Monday. The figures are comparatively better than the IMF outlook for the rest of the world, which pegged real GDP growth at 3.1 percent, down from 3.3 percent
RSS