Following the demonstration outside its office on Friday, the Zhongzheng First Police Precinct yesterday said it resolved after a meeting that the Alliance of Referendum for Taiwan (ART) would again be allowed to assemble on Jinan Road, as it has been doing for the past five years.
More than 1,000 people gathered outside the precinct office on Friday night to protest against Precinct Chief Fang Yang-ning (方仰寧) reneging on his pledge, made in the early hours of Friday morning, to not disperse protesters from the square outside the Legislative Yuan, the venue where the ART had organized talks during the occupation of Legislative Yuan and continued to do so after the Sunflower Movement’s exit on Thursday.
The protesters, who assembled after a call on the Internet to “pass by” the precinct office on Friday evening, also demanded that the office retract its “unconstitutional order” on Wednesday that its approval of the ART’s application to assemble on Jinan Road (one of the roads surrounding the Legislative Yuan) until Saturday be scrapped, saying the ART had violated the law several times and that “any of the organization’s future requests to assemble will no longer be approved.”
The protesters said the police had not only failed to make good on their promise, but also violated the law — by forcibly evicting the protesters — and the Constitution — by unilaterally denying a particular group its right to assemble.
The “passersby” demanding Fang to apologize and step down, has sparked disputes online even among those who support the Sunflower movement.
Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) and Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei mayoral aspirants Sean Lien (連勝文) and Ting Shou-chung (丁守中) have all expressed support for Fang, with Hau saying that he would not accept Fang’s resignation, which had been orally made at the protest site.
However, the precinct office yesterday issued a press release saying “since [the ART’s] act of illegally occupying the plaza had ended, the group’s assembly has now been [re-]sanctioned.”
The office said that although the organization had been continually applying for and receiving approval to assemble on Jinan Road since February 2009, “it nevertheless had illegally led the crowd to break into the legislature’s front plaza and tear down a plaque on March 18, obstructed police officers performing their duties on April 3 and again led the crowd to areas where assemblies and parades are not allowed [the presidential residence and the Executive Yuan] on April 6 and 7.”
“In view of the group constantly harming the social order and damaging public interests, the office has decided [on Wednesday] to revoke the approval for its assembly from April 9 to 19 in accordance with the Assembly and Parade Act (集會遊行法),” it said.
The office said that because the ART had reapplied for approval on Thursday and the police had “persuaded” the protesters to leave the legislature’s front plaza on Friday, thereby “rendering the illegal act of plaza occupation non-existent,” the group’s application to assemble on Jinan Road had been approved again.
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
A former television news host and six military personnel — active and retired — have been indicted on espionage charges, Kaohsiung prosecutors said yesterday. Lin Chen-you (林宸佑), a former CTi News host and YouTuber, last year allegedly made videos at the direction of a Chinese agent criticizing the Democratic Progressive Party’s recall campaign, the Ciaotou District Prosecutors’ Office told a news conference in Kaohsiung. He allegedly received 4,325 tether coins for the videos from an unidentified person surnamed Huang (黃), believed to be an agent of a hostile foreign power, they said. Lin, also known as Ma Te (馬德), has a show named
RSS