A group of 20 college students gathered yesterday at the National Taiwan University campus in support of a May 11 march by the Alliance to Campaign for Rectifying the Name of Taiwan.
Chou Fu-yi (周馥儀), a senior Political Science major at NTU who was also the convener of yesterday's activities, said that the college students all recognized, loved and devoted themselves to Taiwan's culture and the study of it.
According to Chou, most hadn't met each other until yesterday, but they had the same faith -- to love and protect their motherland.
PHOTO: CHIANG YING-YING, TAIPEI TIMES
She told the Taipei Times that she noticed the UN called Taiwan: "Taiwan, province of China" on their Web site at www.un.org/Depts/unsd/methods/m49alpha.htm#ftna, while she was doing a research paper last spring.
On April 9, she saw a poster of the march to be held May 11 to promote "Taiwan" as the official name for the nation. The poster inspired her to organize yesterday's activity to show college students' support for the idea.
"First of all," she said, "my friends and I spread word of the activity by e-mail. All of us believe it is very important to rectify our name. It's about our country's dignity."
"According to the UN, after 1971, the ROC disappeared from the international stage because its seat was taken by the PRC, which is now recognized as the only China in the world," she said. "It will confuse people if we stick to any name that's related to China. Plus, the PRC does not rule Taiwan. The UN's calling of Taiwan a province of China does not reflect reality."
The students also encouraged the public to write e-mail messages to skydaughter@yam.com.tw to show their support. They say they will forward the messages to the UN after the march on May 11 to make sure that Taiwan's voice is heard. In the meantime, they also built a Web site at
http://marianlin.bravepages.com/taiwan/index.htm to deliver their messages on the issue.
"This Web site will be launched on Monday," Chou said. "Also on Monday, we will fax our official statement to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the legislature's Foreign and Overseas Chinese Affairs Committee and hope that our own government officials and lawmakers can do something about this, too."
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