Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairman Su Tseng-chang (
The DPP, along with 210 civic groups, pro-independence groups and trade unions, yesterday together held a conference to announce the establishment of the "Democracy, Peace and Defending Taiwan Alliance" (
The march aims to attract more than 1 million people.
PHOTO: GEORGE TSORNG, TAIPEI TIMES
Su asked the public to call the law the "10 clauses for invading Taiwan."
"The name of the law doesn't make any sense. The essence of China's legislation is to invade Taiwan and we have to be clear about this," Su said.
According to DPP Secretary-General Lee Yi-yang (
The final part of the procession will bring the various routes together at Ketagalan Boulevard (
Meanwhile, former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) yesterday publicly denounced the law as "nonsense," saying that Taiwan has been an independent nation and has recognized China as a nation since May, 1, 1991, the day he announced the abolishment of the Temporary Provisions Effective during the "Period of National Mobilization for the Suppression of the Communist Rebellion" (動員勘亂時期臨時條款).
The provisions were enacted by Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) during his rule of Taiwan.
"The Taiwan government announced the termination of the status of civil war between the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Chinese Communists," Lee said. "Taiwan is an independent nation that has sovereignty and we also recognize Beijing [China] as a nation. There's no pro-Taiwan-independence power existing in Taiwan as China claims."
Lee made the remarks yesterday morning at the graduation ceremony of a class for Japanese at the Lee Teng-hui School.
In his speech, Lee said that it is a fiction for Beijing to claim that Taiwan is a part of China.
"Could we say that Taiwan is part of Holland or Taiwan is part of Japan?" Lee said.
Lee said that China has propagandized its Anti-Secession Law unilaterally in international circles.
"International society often uses the term `Taiwan issue' to refer the controversy across the Strait. However, in fact, the issue doesn't lie with Taiwan, but [rather] lies in China's ambition," Lee said. "China, ruled by an arbitrary military power, is attempting to swallow up Taiwan and then control the countries in East Asia, and repress Japan's lifeline."
"Taiwan is a democratic country and is 100 percent peaceful; it has never attempted to invade another country," Lee said. "Japan has became a progressive country over the last 60 years since World War II, and is a good model for Taiwan to learn from."
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,