The group of student protesters who have been staging a "hunger strike" in front of the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial said early yesterday morning that they ended their strike as planned but would continue protesting.
Rejecting President Chen Shui-bian's (
"We made the time and conditions under which we wished to meet President Chen clear from the very beginning of our protest. For him to suddenly say that he has no time and suggest an alternate date indicates a lack of integrity and sincerity," said Chen Cheng-feng (
The protesters originally demanded that Chen meet them before yesterday. In response, Chen suggested a two-hour-long meeting in public tomorrow.
"We are ending the hunger strike because we need to consider the physical well-being of our members," Chen Cheng-feng said.
"The next step of our movement focuses on interacting with the people and encouraging them to join our sit-down protest. We are going to bring in more student protesters, and communicate with the public about our demands," he said.
The group's 20-odd members have been encamped at the memorial since April 2 and had been taking turns fasting for 12 hours at a time.
The group did not participate in the rally held yesterday by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and People First Party (PFP), saying that they had no political affiliations and thus no reason to join in. They expressed anger that the pro-blue camp had used images of them in newspaper ads for yesterday's rally and demanded that the PFP-KMT alliance apologize.
China has reserved offshore airspace in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea from March 27 to May 6, issuing alerts usually used to warn of military exercises, although no such exercises have been announced, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported yesterday. Reserving such a large area for 40 days without explanation is an “unusual step,” as military exercises normally only last a few days, the paper said. These alerts, known as Notice to Air Missions (Notams), “are intended to inform pilots and aviation authorities of temporary airspace hazards or restrictions,” the article said. The airspace reserved in the alert is
NAMING SPAT: The foreign ministry called on Denmark to propose an acceptable solution to the erroneous nationality used for Taiwanese on residence permits Taiwan has revoked some privileges for Danish diplomatic staff over a Danish permit that lists “Taiwan” as “China,” Eric Huang (黃鈞耀), head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Department of European Affairs, told a news conference in Taipei yesterday. Reporters asked Huang whether the Danish government had responded to the ministry’s request that it correct the nationality on Danish residence permits of Taiwanese, which has been listed as “China” since 2024. Taiwan’s representative office in Denmark continues to communicate with the Danish government, and the ministry has revoked some privileges previously granted to Danish representatives in Taiwan and would continue to review
More than 6,000 Taiwanese students have participated in exchange programs in China over the past two years, despite the Mainland Affairs Council’s (MAC) “orange light” travel advisory, government records showed. The MAC’s publicly available registry showed that Taiwanese college and university students who went on exchange programs across the Strait numbered 3,592 and 2,966 people respectively. The National Immigration Agency data revealed that 2,296 and 2,551 Chinese students visited Taiwan for study in the same two years. A review of the Web sites of publicly-run universities and colleges showed that Taiwanese higher education institutions continued to recruit students for Chinese educational programs without
China has reserved offshore airspace over the Yellow Sea and East China Sea from March 27 to May 6, issuing alerts that are usually used to warn of military exercises, although no such exercises have been announced, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Sunday. Reserving such a large area for 40 days without explanation is an “unusual step,” as military exercises normally only last a few days, the paper said. The alerts, known as notice to air missions (NOTAMs), “are intended to inform pilots and aviation authorities of temporary airspace hazards or restrictions,” the article said. The airspace reserved in the alert
RSS