Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Ilan County councilors and other party members led a demonstration at the opening of the 2009 Ilan International Rain Festival yesterday against the cancellation of the Ilan International Children’s Folklore and Folkgame Festival.
The councilors and protesters held up banners that read “Bring back the International Children’s Folklore and Folkgame Festival” at the opening ceremony site before President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) was to speak.
Police announced that the protest was illegal because the protesters had not sought prior permission. A scuffle broke out and police tried to disperse the protesters. The protesters were forced to leave and were unable to protest in front of Ma.
PHOTO: CNA
The first Children’s Folklore and Folkgame Festival was held in 1995 when Yu Shyi-kun of the DPP was the county’s commissioner. For the next 12 years, the festival earned a reputation as a landmark event — attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors and generating NT$1 billion (US$30 million) in revenue for the local tourism industry each year, DPP Legislator Tien Chiu-chin (田秋堇) said. Tien is the wife of DPP member Liu Shou-cheng (劉守成) who served two terms as Ilan County commissioner after Yu.
Lu Kuo-hua (呂國華) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) was elected as the county commissioner in 2005. Citing heavy losses, Lu announced in 2007 that that year would be the last time the Children’s Folklore and Folk Game Festival would be held. The decision drew sharp criticism and Tien said Lu’s inability to manage the festival had exacerbated the situation.
Last year, the Ilan County Government planned the Ilan International Rain Festival to replace the Children’s Folklore and Folk Game Festival.
The county’s DPP members attempted to petition for a referendum on recovering the Children’s Folklore and Folk Game Festival, but the proposal was blocked by the county government’s referendum review committee.
In his speech addressing the opening of the Rain Festival yesterday, Ma lauded it as a festival that features the best of the northern county’s natural beauty and performances.
Ma praised Ilan’s “progress,” saying he was deeply impressed by the county’s landscape and the performances staged at the opening of the Taiwan Lantern Festival in February and the Ilan Green Expo in March. Ma attended both opening ceremonies.
“Ilan now stands in a much better position to sponsor large-scale tourism activities and attract more visitors, as the opening of the Hsuehshan Tunnel has conveniently connected the county to northern Taiwan regions,” Ma said. “Visitors from northern Taiwan can travel to Ilan and return home in just one day.”
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY CNA
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
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
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