A statue of Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) in Taipei’s Yangmingshan National Park (陽明山國家公園) was yesterday found decapitated.
The statue in Yang-ming Park was beheaded and had red paint smeared over it with a message saying: “228 mastermind” and “serial killer.”
A pro-independence group called the Taiwan Nation Founding Engineering Team (台灣建國工程隊) claimed responsibility for the incident.
Photo provided the Taiwan Nation Founding Engineering Team
“Chiang Kai-shek was the mastermind of the 228 Massacre. It is a universally accepted fact that he was one of the ‘big four murderers’ in history,” the group said in a statement.
“Allowing statues of murderer Chiang to be erected and worshiped in Taiwan is a disgrace,” it added.
The move was to “appease the ghost” of Japanese engineer Yoichi Hatta — known among Taiwanese as the “Father of the Chianan Irrigation System,” the group said, in reference to the beheading of a Hatta statue near Tainan’s Wushantou Reservoir (烏山頭水庫) on Sunday.
“Cut down one of ours and we will cut down countless of yours,” the group said.
Center director Sung Fu-hua (宋馥華) said the Taipei Police Department’s Beitou Precinct is investigating the matter.
The owner of the Yang-ming Park shop reported the defaced statue at about 8am yesterday to the Floriculture Experiment Center, which manages the park, Sung said.
“People throw paint at the Chiang statue in front of the floral park every year on Feb. 28,” she said.
The center had hired guards to protect the statue at night, but only recently ended the practice, she said.
The center said it covered the statue so visitors would not be disturbed.
“The head has yet to be found,” Sung said.
Sung said that vandalizing public property is an indictable crime, urging people not to flout the law with similar offenses.
Additional reporting by Huang Chien-hau
The US government has signed defense cooperation agreements with Japan and the Philippines to boost the deterrence capabilities of countries in the first island chain, a report by the National Security Bureau (NSB) showed. The main countries on the first island chain include the two nations and Taiwan. The bureau is to present the report at a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee tomorrow. The US military has deployed Typhon missile systems to Japan’s Yamaguchi Prefecture and Zambales province in the Philippines during their joint military exercises. It has also installed NMESIS anti-ship systems in Japan’s Okinawa
‘WIN-WIN’: The Philippines, and central and eastern European countries are important potential drone cooperation partners, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung said Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) in an interview published yesterday confirmed that there are joint ventures between Taiwan and Poland in the drone industry. Lin made the remark in an exclusive interview with the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper). The government-backed Taiwan Excellence Drone International Business Opportunities Alliance and the Polish Chamber of Unmanned Systems on Wednesday last week signed a memorandum of understanding in Poland to develop a “non-China” supply chain for drones and work together on key technologies. Asked if Taiwan prioritized Poland among central and eastern European countries in drone collaboration, Lin
Renewed border fighting between Thailand and Cambodia showed no signs of abating yesterday, leaving hundreds of thousands of displaced people in both countries living in strained conditions as more flooded into temporary shelters. Reporters on the Thai side of the border heard sounds of outgoing, indirect fire yesterday. About 400,000 people have been evacuated from affected areas in Thailand and about 700 schools closed while fighting was ongoing in four border provinces, said Thai Rear Admiral Surasant Kongsiri, a spokesman for the military. Cambodia evacuated more than 127,000 villagers and closed hundreds of schools, the Thai Ministry of Defense said. Thailand’s military announced that
CABINET APPROVAL: People seeking assisted reproduction must be assessed to determine whether they would be adequate parents, the planned changes say Proposed amendments to the Assisted Reproduction Act (人工生殖法) advanced yesterday by the Executive Yuan would grant married lesbian couples and single women access to legal assisted reproductive services. The proposed revisions are “based on the fundamental principle of respecting women’s reproductive autonomy,” Cabinet spokesperson Michelle Lee (李慧芝) quoted Vice Premier Cheng Li-chiun (鄭麗君), who presided over a Cabinet meeting earlier yesterday, as saying at the briefing. The draft amendment would be submitted to the legislature for review. The Ministry of Health and Welfare, which proposed the amendments, said that experts on children’s rights, gender equality, law and medicine attended cross-disciplinary meetings, adding that
RSS