Minister of the Interior Lee Yi-yang (
Lee slammed Ma in a ministry press release for having allowed anti-Chen protesters to demonstrate at the station day and night since Saturday, saying that the station was the city's premier transportation hub and consequently unsuitable for an around-the-clock protest.
Ma risked the safety of Taipei residents by allowing such a protest to take place at a busy transit point, Lee said, adding that travelers whose political opinions differed from those of protesters were being accosted.
A Taipei City Government spokeswoman at the Department of Information refused to comment on Lee's criticism of the mayor.
"We need to get confirmation of Mayor Ma's position before we can say anything," she said, identifying herself merely as "Ms. Wu" (
She added that she didn't know when or if the mayor would respond to Lee's comments.
Making room
According to a press release issued by the Taipei City Government on Sunday, Ma said that he had agreed to move the anti-Chen protest from Ketagalan Boulevard to the railway station to make room for pro-Chen supporters who have protested on the boulevard since Saturday. In order to separate the two groups of protesters, Ma had no choice but to allow the anti-Chen protesters to move to the station, the release said.
Chen Feng-nan (陳峰男), deputy director of the Taiwan Railway Administration (TRA), said on Thursday that the Taipei Railway Station was "not a place for protests."
Chen and Railway Police Bureau Deputy Director Lee Chen-kuang (
However, numerous protesters have been sleeping and protesting in the station, according to local media.
"It's actually okay if [the protesters] rest [in the station] at night," Chen told the Taipei Times yesterday, adding that some protesters may have shouted slogans "once or twice," but hadn't interfered with railway operations.
`Just too many'
"There are just too many [protesters], and you can't force them [to leave]," administration spokesman Teng Chia-chi (
Lee Chen-kuang told the Taipei Times that protesters in the station are often travelers, too.
Exceptions need to be made as long as safety and order are not compromised, he added.
Both Chen Feng-nan and Lee Chen-kuang said that protests haven't interfered with railway operations, and that the trains were running smoothly.
Regarding recent altercations between the pro-Chen and anti-Chen camps at the protests, Lee Yi-yang said in the ministry statement that unlawful behavior would not be tolerated.
"Since the anti-Chen sit-in began, anti-Chen protesters have turned over cars and motorbikes," Lee Yi-yang is quoted as saying in the release. He added that pro-Chen protesters had sabotaged the broadcast booths of CtiTV and the Eastern Broadcasting Company at their demonstration.
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Wang Shih-chien (王世堅) was shown on local television escorting a CtiTV anchorman on Saturday from Ketagalan Boulevard as pro-Chen protesters jostled the newscaster and overran his booth.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comment last year on Tokyo’s potential reaction to a Taiwan-China conflict has forced Beijing to rewrite its invasion plans, a retired Japanese general said. Takaichi told the Diet on Nov. 7 last year that a Chinese naval blockade or military attack on Taiwan could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, potentially allowing Tokyo to exercise its right to collective self-defense. Former Japan Ground Self-Defense Force general Kiyofumi Ogawa said in a recent speech that the remark has been interpreted as meaning Japan could intervene in the early stages of a Taiwan Strait conflict, undermining China’s previous assumptions
Instead of focusing solely on the threat of a full-scale military invasion, the US and its allies must prepare for a potential Chinese “quarantine” of Taiwan enforced through customs inspections, Stanford University Hoover fellow Eyck Freymann said in a Foreign Affairs article published on Wednesday. China could use various “gray zone” tactics in “reconfiguring the regional and ultimately the global economic order without a war,” said Freymann, who is also a nonresident research fellow at the US Naval War College. China might seize control of Taiwan’s links to the outside world by requiring all flights and ships entering or leaving Taiwan
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