A Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislator lashed out at the Taipei City Government yesterday for adopting double standards in attempting to protect the Chiang Kai-shek (CKS) Memorial Hall.
Double standards
At a news conference she called at the Legislative Yuan, DPP Legislator Lin Shu-fen (林淑芬) said that in order to block the demolition of the wall surrounding the CKS Memorial Hall -- as decided by the Cabinet last Friday when it announced that the hall will be renamed "Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall" -- the Taipei City Government had demonstrated a "double standards mentality" on the protection of historical sites.
Lin said the Taipei City Department of Cultural Affairs had scrambled on Tuesday to have the CKS Memorial Hall temporarily declared a heritage site in a desparate attempt to protect the hall's outer wall from being torn down.
Review
Department director Lee Yong-ping (李永萍) said on Tuesday that at the request of several residents and historians, the department had begun a review of the memorial's historical and cultural significance in accordance with the Cultural Heritage Preservation Law (文化資產保存法).
With the review process in progress, the hall has been temporarily designated a heritage site and therefore cannot be altered, Lee said.
Lin claimed that the city government was using double standards by moving to protect the outer wall of the CKS Memorial Hall -- which is only 27 years old -- while planning to tear down the wall around the Confucius Temple in Talungtung (大龍峒), which is nearly 200 years old, a plan dating back to when Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) was mayor.
Approachable
Ma had agreed that the wall around the Confucius Temple should be torn down "to make it more approachable for the public," Lin said.
On Saturday, Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) said the plan to tear down the wall around CKS Memorial Hall required the approval of the city government.
also see story:
Editorial: The cherry-picking of history
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
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,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods