Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators yesterday lashed out at Cabinet Secretary-General Hsueh Hsiang-chuan (薛香川) for his comment that the DPP was a “party of violence” and demanded an apology.
Reporting to the legislature’s Internal Administration Committee for the first time following the comment earlier this month, Hsueh was grilled by DPP legislators the moment he stepped into the meeting room.
On Oct. 3, Department of Health Minister Yeh Ching-chuan (葉金川) attended a press conference held by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislative caucus to promote milk and bread produced locally amid China’s tainted milk scare.
Protesting Yeh’s decision to attend the KMT press conference but not the DPP’s, DPP lawmakers tried to persuade Yeh to go to the DPP caucus office as Yeh was leaving and engaged in a physical clash with their KMT colleagues who were escorting Yeh out.
During the clash, Yeh’s blood pressure increased and he was hospitalized at the National Taiwan University Hospital nearby later in the day.
Walking out of the hospital after paying a visit to Yeh, Hsueh said: “After so many years, the DPP is still a party of violence.”
Hsueh came under fire the moment he walked into the meeting room yesterday as he was five minutes late. He explained that he was held up in traffic, but the explanation only drew more fire from DPP Legislator Chiu Yi-ying (邱議瑩) as the Executive Yuan is only a few blocks away from the Legislative Yuan.
“You cannot humiliate the entire party like this — do you think it would be reasonable if I called the KMT a ‘party of murderers’ because the KMT’s Cheng Tai-chi [鄭太吉] is a murderer?” DPP Legislator Tsai Huang-liang (蔡煌瑯) asked.
Cheng committed murder in 1994 when he was the Pingtung County Council speaker and was executed in 2000.
“I demand that you apologize to the DPP,” Tsai said.
“Seeing what happened to Yeh, as a Cabinet member I was in great fear at the time and thought that I — or any other government official — may be treated like that as well,” Hsueh said.
Criticism also came from KMT Legislator John Wu (吳志揚), who told Hsueh: “It’s inappropriate for you to make such a comment as a Cabinet official — especially when improving relations with the opposition is an important part of President Ma Ying-jeou’s [馬英九]
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,
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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:
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