Calling on people to join the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) rally to “besiege” Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林) when he meets President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) today, DPP Chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said yesterday she would take full responsibility for the rally.
Tsai said the DPP would do all it can to hold a peaceful demonstration, but that it cannot guarantee that protesters would not be radicalized if police denied them their right to free expression.
The DPP-organized “Yellow Ribbon Siege” will start at 1pm, with protesters walking to the Taipei Guest House on Ketagalan Boulevard and besiege the Boai District (博愛), chanting slogans and using horns, bells, whistles and other objects to generate noise, DPP spokesman Cheng Wen-tsang (鄭文燦) said.
PHOTO: LIN CHENG-KUNG, TAIPEI TIMES
Cheng said that the party expects 100,000 to take part in the rally.
“We will let Ma and Chen hear the voice of the people,” he said.
After initially denying the DPP permission to hold the rally, the Taipei City Police Department yesterday afternoon announced it had given the DPP permission.
Saying that the DPP is not opposed to cross-Taiwan Strait exchanges or dialogue to help maintain stability and peace, Tsai said the party is simply worried that Taiwan is paying too high a price.
“Balance has been lost on this visit [by Chen]. Taiwan is paying too high a political price in terms of sovereignty, democracy, freedom of speech and all other forms of expression commonly enjoyed in a free and democratic society,” Tsai said.
“I am depressed because we are going through a dark period in Taiwan’s history,” she said. “People’s rights, personal liberties, freedom of speech and judicial rights were seriously violated in the past couple of days. Facing an authoritarian government, the party had no choice but to take to the streets, just as it fought for Taiwan’s democracy before.”
At a separate setting yesterday, National Police Agency director-general Wang Cho-chiun (王卓鈞) denied allegations that government officials had ordered the confiscation of Republic of China flags, and rebutted rumors that local police departments in central and southern Taiwan were to stop any bus heading to Taipei carrying demonstrators on their way to the rally.
“Our goal has always been to protect all legal activities, block illegal ones and sanction violent acts,” Wang said, acknowledging that there are had been problems in how police had handled demonstrators.
He said, however, that police had acted within the law.
Wang said all police officers on duty would follow three main guidelines: act according to the law, remain neutral and strictly reinforce the law.
“So far, all police action has respected the legal framework,” he said. “Although I have to say that some officers do need to improve their skills and attitude.”
Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) Chairman Huang Kun-huei (黃昆輝) said yesterday he would also lead TSU supporters at the rally.
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus urged the DPP to call off its plan to “besiege” the Taipei Guest House during Ma’s meeting with Chen.
Calling the plan “illegal,” KMT caucus deputy secretary-general Yang Chiung-ying (楊瓊瓔) yesterday urged Tsai to “stop throwing Taiwan into chaos.”
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY FLORA WANG
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:
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
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