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.
The combined effect of the monsoon, the outer rim of Typhoon Fengshen and a low-pressure system is expected to bring significant rainfall this week to various parts of the nation, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The heaviest rain is expected to occur today and tomorrow, with torrential rain expected in Keelung’s north coast, Yilan and the mountainous regions of Taipei and New Taipei City, the CWA said. Rivers could rise rapidly, and residents should stay away from riverbanks and avoid going to the mountains or engaging in water activities, it said. Scattered showers are expected today in central and
COOPERATION: Taiwan is aligning closely with US strategic objectives on various matters, including China’s rare earths restrictions, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Taiwan could deal with China’s tightened export controls on rare earth metals by turning to “urban mining,” a researcher said yesterday. Rare earth metals, which are used in semiconductors and other electronic components, could be recovered from industrial or electronic waste to reduce reliance on imports, National Cheng Kung University Department of Resources Engineering professor Lee Cheng-han (李政翰) said. Despite their name, rare earth elements are not actually rare — their abundance in the Earth’s crust is relatively high, but they are dispersed, making extraction and refining energy-intensive and environmentally damaging, he said, adding that many countries have opted to
FORCED LABOR: A US court listed three Taiwanese and nine firms based in Taiwan in its indictment, with eight of the companies registered at the same address Nine companies registered in Taiwan, as well as three Taiwanese, on Tuesday were named by the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) as Specially Designated Nationals (SDNs) as a result of a US federal court indictment. The indictment unsealed at the federal court in Brooklyn, New York, said that Chen Zhi (陳志), a dual Cambodian-British national, is being indicted for fraud conspiracy, money laundering and overseeing Prince Holding Group’s forced-labor scam camps in Cambodia. At its peak, the company allegedly made US$30 million per day, court documents showed. The US government has seized Chen’s noncustodial wallet, which contains
SUPPLY CHAIN: Taiwan’s advantages in the drone industry include rapid production capacity that is independent of Chinese-made parts, the economic ministry said The Executive Yuan yesterday approved plans to invest NT$44.2 billion (US$1.44 billion) into domestic production of uncrewed aerial vehicles over the next six years, bringing Taiwan’s output value to more than NT$40 billion by 2030 and making the nation Asia’s democratic hub for the drone supply chain. The proposed budget has NT$33.8 billion in new allocations and NT$10.43 billion in existing funds, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said. Under the new development program, the public sector would purchase nearly 100,000 drones, of which 50,898 would be for civil and government use, while 48,750 would be for national defense, it said. The Ministry of
RSS