The anti-President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) campaign yesterday called on two million protesters to join its "siege" on Tuesday and encircle the Presidential Office building from four directions during the Double Ten National Day celebration.
The target of the so-called "siege" will be the president alone, and the celebration and attending guests will not be affected by the demonstration, organizers said.
"We have already had discussions with the Taipei City Government and the police department. The siege will proceed with love, peace and non-violence," deputy coordinator of the campaign Chien Hsi-chieh said during a press conference yesterday.
PHOTO: CNA
The protest rally will take place simultaneously on the Xinyi Road section of Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, the Nanhai Road area of the Taipei Botanical Garden, the ROC Armed Forces Cultural Center and Taipei Main Station.
At the main station, the campaign organizers have also planned a gathering on the eve of National Day as a private celebration of the occasion, Chien said.
Protesters were requested to wear red clothes, tie red ribbons around their hands, and carry MP3 players or radios as the camp plans to broadcast directions by means of radio.
"Most importantly, bring resolve, and not hate, with you," Chien said.
Campaign leader Shih Ming-teh (施明德) accused the president of putting pressure on Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平), who is in charge of organizing the celebrations, to cancel the ceremony, and of failing to offer a positive response to the voice of the people.
"When two million people show up at the siege, their voice will represent the opinion of 23 million Taiwanese," Shih said.
"The people are the master of Taiwan. President Chen is the people's servant. When the servant is corrupt and incompetent, the master has the right to fire him," he said.
Shih also denounced Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (
"He actually wants to maintain the status quo and keep A-bian from stepping down, so that his dream of becoming the president in 2008 can be realized without effort," he said.
Ma declined to comment on the criticism while KMT spokesman Huang Yu-cheng (黃玉振) said the party has been supportive of the campaign and put its full weight behind recalling the president.
"We've done all we can do, and I believe that the people are able to make their own judgment ? The KMT respects Shih's comments," he said yesterday.
When asked whether the KMT would join the siege, Ma said yesterday that the party would not be directly involved.
"But our members are free to attend the event as individuals," he said yesterday while attending a municipal event in Taipei.
People First Party Chairman James Soong (
The Taipei City Police Department declared that approximately 5,000 officers will be on duty at the celebrations.
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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
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: