A group of Hong Kongers studying in Kaohsiung on Saturday launched a helmet donation drive in support of anti-extradition bill protesters back home, and more than doubled their target of collecting 500 helmets within an hour, one of the organizers said yesterday.
Fooyin University senior Ariel Lam (林沛晞) said they wanted to do something after the protests in Hong Kong turned violent last week.
The protesters face a shortage of supplies, so she and her friends decided to collect second-hand helmets to offer protesters on the front lines better protection, Lam said.
Photo courtesy of Hong Kong Outlanders
Helmets are important because people clad in white shirts and police officers have hit protesters on the head, she said.
By the time the group had finished setting up their collection point in Kaohsiung at 4:30pm on Saturday, many people were already waiting in line to donate, she said.
They began accepting helmets at about 5pm and by 6pm they had 500 helmets, and by the time they closed the drive at 7:30pm they had collected more than 1,000, many of which were new, she said.
They also collected more than NT$100,000, which would go toward supporting the anti-extradition bill protests, she said.
Lam said she was touched by the enthusiasm of people in Kaohsiung and she had not expected so many people to donate.
They want to thank Kaohsiung residents for their generosity and support, as well as the Taiwan Statebuilding Party, formerly known as the Radical Wings, the New Power Party and other parties for helping promote Saturday’s event, she said.
A second drive was held on Sunday in Taipei’s Xinyi District (信義), with the aim of collecting 300 helmets.
The organizers are now looking for a way to send the helmets to Hong Kong, but they did not want to discuss the details to protect their peers, Lam said.
She hopes all Taiwanese can take in what is happening in Hong Kong, she said.
While some Taiwanese might question why Taiwan is at risk of ending up like Hong Kong, she hopes that when voting in next year’s presidential election, Taiwanese would not believe in Beijing’s “one country, two systems” arrangement or a pro-Beijing candidate, she added.
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
NEW LOW: The council in 2024 based predictions on a pessimistic estimate for the nation’s total fertility rate of 0.84, but last year that rate was 0.69, 17 percent lower An expected National Development Council (NDC) report expects the nation’s population to drop below 12 million by 2065, with the old-age dependency ratio to top 100 percent sooner than 2070, sources said yesterday. The council is slated to release its latest population projections in August, using an ultra-low fertility model, the sources said. The previous report projected that Taiwan’s population would fall to 14.37 million by 2070, but based on a new estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — the population is expected to reach 12 million by
INTENSIFYING THREATS: Beijing’s tactics include massive attacks on the government service network, aircraft and naval vessel incursions and damaging undersea cables China is prepared to interfere in November’s nine-in-one local elections by launching massive attacks on the Taiwanese government’s service network (GSN), a report published by the National Security Bureau showed. The report was submitted to the Legislative Yuan ahead of the bureau’s scheduled briefing at the Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee tomorrow. The national security team has identified about 13,000 suspicious Internet accounts and 860,000 disputed messages, the bureau said of China’s cognitive warfare against Taiwan. The disputed messages focus on major foreign affairs, national defense and economic issues, which were produced using generative artificial intelligence (AI) and distributed through Chinese
COUNTERING HOSTILITY: The draft bill would require the US to increase diplomatic pressure on China and would impose sanctions on those who sabotage undersea cable networks US lawmakers on Thursday introduced a bipartisan bill to bolster the resilience of Taiwan’s submarine cables to counter China’s hostile activities. The proposal, titled the critical undersea infrastructure resilience initiative act, was cosponsored by Republican representatives Mike Lawler and Greg Stanton, and Democratic Representative Dave Min. US Senators John Curtis and Jacky Rosen also introduced a companion bill in the US Senate, which has passed markup at the chamber’s Committee on Foreign Relations. The House’s version of the bill would prioritize the deployment of sensors to detect disruptions or potential sabotage in real-time and enhance early warning capabilities through global intelligence sharing frameworks,
RSS