The military said yesterday it would remove all remaining military guards of honor and military police from the mausoleums of former presidents Chiang Kai-shek (
The Ministry of National Defense said 80 honor guards and military police are currently stationed at Chiang Kai-shek's mausoleum, with another 35 at Chiang Ching-kuo's.
Ministry officials said they would also close the two mausoleums amid concerns they might be vandalized after military personnel are withdrawn from the sites.
The ministry confirmed that officials had begun talks with the Taoyuan County Government about taking over the running of the two sites as they are popular tourist attractions. The county government has yet to decide when it will take over, and the ministry will continue maintenance work at the two sites until the change of jurisdiction.
During the interval, Taoyuan Police Department said it might take over the military police's duties at the mausoleums.
"We are ready. But we are waiting for the order from the county government," said Lin Teh-hua (
Meanwhile, the government will change the way it refers to the two sites from "mausoleum" to "grave" or "cemetery," Cabinet Spokesman Shieh Jhy-wey (謝志偉) said yesterday.
"Mausoleum will not be used in official documents when referring to the place as part of the government's efforts to advance transitional justice," Shieh said.
He said the government had done all it could for the late presidents and called on the public not to politicize the changes, which he said were "necessary processes for the country to achieve normalization."
The Presidential Office has urged the Chiang family to relocate the remains to a tomb at the Wuchihshan Military Cemetery (
The Chiang family made a request to the military in 2004 that the remains be transferred to Wuchihshan, where Chiang Kai-shek's other son, Weigo Chiang (
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
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,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift