The Ministry of Education kept a low profile yesterday after a media report said it was planning to change the name of the Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall back to Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall.
Chu Nan-hsien (朱楠賢), the director-general of the Department of Social Education, which supervises the hall, said that before the ministry makes budget requests for the next fiscal year, it would only address regulations related to the hall.
Chu was referring to the Organic Statute of Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall (中正紀念堂組織條例), which the former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government had sought to abolish before changing the hall’s name to Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall on May 19 last year.
However, the legislature did not approve the then-Cabinet’s proposal to abolish the statute. It also blocked another organic statute of the democracy hall proposed by the Cabinet.
Asked if the ministry would remove every plaque in the hall that bore the title “Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall,” Chu said the ministry was still deliberating the matter.
Chu made the comment in response to a report in the Chinese-language United Daily News yesterday that said the Cabinet was expected to pass a proposal to abolish the proposed organic statute of the Taiwan Democratic Memorial Hall this week, while retracting the former DPP Cabinet’s proposal to the Legislative Yuan that sought to abolish the Organic Statute of CKS Memorial Hall.
The story said the ministry would replace all democracy hall plaques with Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall plaques.
The story quoted an unidentified Cabinet official as saying that the move would be completed before the fall legislative session begins next month. The story said the Cabinet and the ministry, however, planned to keep the "Liberty Square" inscription on the gate of the hall rather than restoring the original dazhong zhizheng (大中至正) inscription as a gesture of reconciliation and coexistence with the different political views in Taiwan.
The inscription was removed on Dec. 6, leading to clashes between pan-blue and pan-green supporters in front of the hall. A TV cameraman was run over by a small truck and seriously injured during the standoff.
Cabinet Spokeswoman Vanessa Shih (史亞平) was unavailable for comment yesterday.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Instead of focusing solely on the threat of a full-scale military invasion, the US and its allies must prepare for a potential Chinese “quarantine” of Taiwan enforced through customs inspections, Stanford University Hoover fellow Eyck Freymann said in a Foreign Affairs article published on Wednesday. China could use various “gray zone” tactics in “reconfiguring the regional and ultimately the global economic order without a war,” said Freymann, who is also a nonresident research fellow at the US Naval War College. China might seize control of Taiwan’s links to the outside world by requiring all flights and ships entering or leaving Taiwan
The next minimum wage hike is expected to exceed NT$30,000, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday during an award ceremony honoring “model workers,” including migrant workers, at the Presidential Office ahead of Workers’ Day today. Lai said he wished to thank the awardees on behalf of the nation and extend his most sincere respect for their hard work, on which Taiwan’s prosperity has been built. Lai specifically thanked 10 migrant workers selected for the award, saying that although they left their home countries to further their own goals, their efforts have benefited Taiwan as well. The nation’s industrial sector and small businesses lay
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