Shouting "Long live Chiang Kai-shek [蔣介石]," thousands of protesters yesterday joined the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in a demonstration voicing recognition of Chiang's contributions to Taiwan and denouncing the government's anti-Chiang campaign.
Led by former KMT chairman and presidential hopeful Ma Ying-jeou (
Protesters, many of them wearing blue or red, carried portraits of Chiang and Sun Yat-sen (
"President Chiang was our leader, and he did a lot of things for this country. I won't allow the Democratic Progressive Party [DPP] to eliminate his contributions," a veteran surnamed Chang (章), who declined to give his full name, said yesterday during the protest.
Many of the protesters were war veterans like Chang, and alumni from the Military Academy, a military school founded by Chiang, also turned out.
After the crowd returned to the Ketagalan Boulevard, video clips documenting life in the 1950s and 1960s and statues of Chiang being removed or damaged were shown on a big screen.
While only a few hundred protesters remained at the rally after the march, the atmosphere reached a climax when Ma appeared on the stage, urging the government and the public to recognize Chiang's contributions to the nation.
"We stand here to extend our support to Chiang as he made a great contribution in restoring, defending and developing Taiwan," Ma said to the rally.
Amid cheers of "Go, go Ma Ying-jeou," the KMT presidential hopeful acknowledged that Chiang should be held responsible for the 228 Incident, the White Terror era and the enforcement of martial laws, but also said that Chiang's contributions should not be overshadowed by his mistakes.
"He was not a saint, and the mistakes he made are known to history. Still, we can't deny his contributions," Ma said.
In response to DPP Chairman Yu Shyi-kun's remarks that the government should cancel the holidays commemorating Chiang's birth and death, Ma denounced the DPP for failing to focus its efforts on improving the people's livelihoods instead.
"A responsible government should do more than just try to revise conceptions about historic figures," he said.
Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) joined Ma's criticism, urging the administration not to create ethnic clashes while ignoring what they said was the nation's declining competitiveness.
"If the anti-Chiang Kai-shek campaign could create harmonious ethnic relationships and help Taiwan to get more international recognition, then we wouldn't mind. But that's not the case," Wang said.
While criticizing the DPP for initiating the anti-Chiang campaign as an election strategy, the KMT also took advantage of the protest for campaigning purposes, as both Wang and Ma urged the protesters, who were primarily pan-blue supporters, to help the KMT to win the upcoming legislative and presidential elections.
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