Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairman Yu Shyi-kun yesterday announced that he would campaign for a referendum on the Chinese Nationalist Party's (KMT) stolen assets by holding 100 rallies around the nation starting today.
Yu told a press conference that the nationwide rallies would begin today in Kaohsiung to commemorate the 18th anniversary of the death of human rights activist Deng Nan-jung(
Deng was the publisher of the Freedom Era (自由時代) weekly. He immolated himself when police attempted to arrest him in 1989, to protest against the KMT's oppression of the freedom of the press.
Yu called the demonstrations the "Support Taiwan and Fight for Justice" rallies and said the highlight of today's rally would be a symbolic gesture depicting the recovery of the stolen assets.
Yu said the KMT did not want to return the assets to the public and had blocked legislation on the issue, which forced the DPP to initiate a campaign calling for a referendum.
Saying that little progress had been made over the past two months, Yu said he would increase the number of pro-referendum signatures he was responsible for from 5,000 to 50,000.
The Referendum Law (
On Thursday the party made public that it had only accomplished 6.17 percent of its goal.
In a bid to reach the goal, the DPP had divided up the responsibility for collecting signatures and assigned shares to party officials. Yu, one of the DPP's presidential hopefuls, has reached his goal of 5,000. Former premier Frank Hsieh (謝長廷), another presidential contender, has collected 3,000 names.
Premier Su Tseng-chang (
"Although Taiwan is a democracy, the DPP has been in office for seven years and transitional justice has not been carried out," Yu said.
"Many injustices remain in Taiwan and they comprise a great obstacle between Taiwanese and happiness," he said.
"Over the past seven years the DPP has failed to keep many of its promises, which has led the public to distrust the DPP," he said.
"I hope we will realize the referendum no matter what happens. This is a matter of confidence and perseverance," he said.
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:
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