The Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) announced yesterday it was organizing a petition drive to solicit 1 million signatures supporting the creation of a new constitution to coincide with a march in favor of referendum legislation to be held in Kaohsiung tomorrow.
TSU Chairman Huang Chu-wen (
Organizers expect the march to attract more than 200,000 people. President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), who proposed a new constitution during the DPP's 17th anniversary celebrations on Sept. 28, will give a speech at the rally promoting his party's constitutional reform platform.
Tomorrow's march comes less than two months after pro-independence activists organized a march in Taipei on Sept. 6 to call for a change in the country's name from "Republic of China" to "Taiwan."
Pro-independence supporters, led by former president Lee Teng-hui (
Huang said the establishment of a new constitution would enable Taiwan to assert its de jure independence.
Not to be outdone, pro-unification supporters are planning a counter-protest in downtown Taipei tomorrow to oppose the establishment of a new constitution and to safeguard the status of the ROC. They will be marking Retrocession Day, the day in 1945 when Taiwan reverted to ROC rule after Japan's defeat in World War II.
The protest is being led by Elmer Feng (
Feng said yesterday that the presidential election will be a crusade to safeguard the survival of the ROC against the establishment of a Republic of Taiwan.
The alliance posted advertisements in Chinese-language newspapers yesterday to call for pro-unification supporters to join the march.
"The march is being staged to oppose the DPP's march to push for Taiwan independence, an attempt to annihilate the ROC," the alliance said in the advertisements.
The legislative assembly is today expected to consider whether to pass the DPP's version of the referendum law on to the second reading.
The DPP's referendum law allows for referendums to decide the nation's sovereignty, including changes to the national flag and national title.
However, referendums on sovereignty issues would be limited to "defensive use." In other words, the president could initiate such a referendum if Taiwan comes under foreign military threat.
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:
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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