The DPP yesterday voiced support for activists in Hong Kong protesting against Beijing's imposition of an anti-subversion law and dismissed China's "one country, two systems" formula as something Taiwanese people will never accept.
"Taiwanese people can identify with the pains and desperate urge of Hong Kong people to seek full democracy and to choose their own leader," Lee Ying-yuan (李應元), DPP deputy secretary-general, said yesterday in response to protests in Hong Kong on Wednesday night.
"All 23 million Taiwanese can be the backbone for Hong Kong people in their cause to gain freedom and democracy," Lee said.
A former political dissident and longtime democracy activist, Lee said Taiwan has had similar experiences as Hong Kong in struggling for democracy.
"Taiwan has come a long way in getting rid of the authoritarian rule of the KMT through a lot of important moves such as the abolishment of the notorious Article 100 of the Criminal Code. The article is analogous to the anti-subversion bill that Beijing is trying to impose on Hong Kong," Lee said.
"The direct election of the president in 1996 was an important sign of the burgeoning of Taiwan's democracy," he said.
Lee said that since coming to power, Chinese President Hu Jintao (
"We recognize these efforts by Hu and we hope China won't go against the trend of democracy by reining in Hong Kong's freedom," Lee said.
The "one country, two systems" formula practiced in Hong Kong has proven to be a failure and has revealed China's deception to the world, he said.
"Hong Kong used to be the pearl of the orient. But the pearl has lost its luster under `one country, two systems,'" Lee said.
He said such a formula would never be accepted by the people of Taiwan and urged pro-Beijing politicians in the country to beware of China's tricks.
"Taiwan and China are countries on each side of the Taiwan Strait. Taiwan is not a part of the People's Republic of China and Taiwan would reject any attempt to be denigrated into a second Hong Kong," Lee said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching