Several thousand anti-independence demonstrators gathered in Taipei yesterday to mark the day Taiwan was freed from Japanese colonial rule 58 years ago.
Waving Taiwanese flags, the demonstrators shouted slogans, including "Oppose Taiwan independence" and "Against the new constitution" as they marched from the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall to the presidential square.
The marchers were led by a van decorated with a huge flower-studded portrait of Soong Mayling (宋美齡), also known as Madame Chiang, who died Friday.
Protesters were stopped by barbed wire barricades from approaching the presidential office.
"The event, taking place on Taiwan Retrocession Day, was arranged to counter the mass rally planned by pro-independence groups in southern Kaohsiung later [yesterday]," said Fung Hu-hsiung, one of the organizers of the march.
"We are against Taiwan independence. We would like to awaken the public that Taiwan was freed because the Republic of China [ROC] government won the war against Japan," he said. "Pushing for a new constitution through referendums is in fact trying to eliminate the ROC, which we absolutely cannot accept."
Retrocession Day marks Taiwan's emancipation from 50 years of Japanese colonial rule in 1945 at the end of World War II and its return to China, then governed by Chiang Kai-shek's Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
The Republic of China was the official name of China before the communists won a civil war in 1949 and is now the official title for Taiwan.
Pro-independence supporters have proposed changing the island's official name from "Republic of China" to "Taiwan."
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