The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday criticized President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) over his support for a hotly contended amendment to the Assembly and Parade Act (集會遊行法).
Ma met rights activists and academics on Sunday to talk about the proposed law and said he had asked the Cabinet to reduce the fine for violators of the proposed law.
DPP spokesman Cheng Wen-tsang (鄭文燦) told a press conference yesterday Ma was not sincere.
“He focused on the amount of the fine, but that is not the point. The point is Ma and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) want to use their power to restrict the public’s right to hold rallies,” Cheng said.
He said the DPP opposed the amendment, which would give police the right to ban a rally or change its route if they believed it would jeopardize national security, social order or it was against the public interest. The amendment also gives police the right to break up any rally that blocks traffic.
It is like a law from the Martial Law era, Cheng said.
Cheng called on the public to join the sit-in protest against the proposed amendment following the DPP’s rally on Sunday.
Meanwhile, pro-localization groups yesterday also called on young people to join the rally on Sunday.
Soochow University political science professor Luo Chih-cheng (羅致政) said Ma has said he would not be against negotiating political issues with China if he were re-elected in 2012 and as his policy of ultimate unification with China would decide the future of Taiwan’s younger generations, young people should express their opposition at the rally.
Speaking to China Television Co about the rally in an interview yesterday, Ma said he respected the DPP’s decision to protest and he was willing to listen to their voices.
He said the Presidential Office would have staff on duty to accept their petition on the day and he hoped to see the demonstration carried out in a peaceful and rational manner.
In related news, Taipei City Government last night gave the DPP permission to extend their protest on Ketagalan Boulevard through the night, dispelling concerns that the sit-in protest would be illegal and broken up by police.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY KO SHU-LING AND STAFF WRITER
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
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