DPP Chairman Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) yesterday said that the March 26 march was the largest gathering in the history of Taiwan's democratic movement, as an estimated 1 million Taiwanese people joined in the march and voiced their desire for peace and democracy.
Su made the remarks yesterday in a news conference held by the Taiwan Democratic Alliance for Peace, the organizer of the March 26 march.
The news conference was held at at the Gloria Prince Hotel (華泰王子大飯店) to express appreciation of all the people who contributed to making the massive rally a success on Saturday.
Resolution
"On March 26, the people of Taiwan showed their resolution in protecting their homeland from China's aggression, and showed it with real action. Many people brought their families along to the rally. This also demonstrates the diversity of Taiwan's society and our way of life," Su said.
"China does not know how to respect the individual. It only knows how to bully a country that is smaller than it is," he said.
"We hope the whole world will now hear the voice of the people of Taiwan, and understand that we don't plan to change the status quo in the Taiwan Strait," Su added.
Disputes
As for the disputes over the turnout for the march, according to a survey conducted by the alliance on March 28 and 29, about 5.5 percent of those polled -- 1,293 people over 20 years of age -- said that they joined in the march.
According to the Ministry of the Interior, there are about 16.74 million people over 20 years old.
From these numbers, the alliance calculated that about 930,000 people participated in the historic event.
Historic
"About 670,000 people actually joined in the march. They came together from 10 different routes. Then about 260,000 people went on to the rally that was held on Ketagalan Boulevard," Lee said.
"It was also close to estimates given by over 20 international mass media outlets," DPP Secretary-General Lee Yi-yang (李逸洋) said yesterday.
The poll also supported President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) comment regarding the march, saying that about 230,000 citizens of Taipei City and about 200,000 citizens of Taipei County participated in the event.
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