Activists are staging a “Vote for a Free Burma” concert — as part of a global day of action — to celebrate Myanmar democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi’s 65th birthday and to voice their support for the Myanmar opposition democracy movement in Kaohsiung tomorrow.
“The Myanmar military junta revised the election law in March to ban ‘people who have been convicted’ from taking part in October’s election. The revision was followed by yet another revision of the law on political parties having to re-register,” Taiwan Free Burma Network (TFBN) spokesman Yang Tsung-li (楊宗澧) said. “The moves were meant to exclude Aung San Suu Kyi from the election and to force her National League for Democracy [NLD] to disband.”
Seeing the difficulties that Taiwan’s Southeast Asian neighbor is facing in its struggle for democracy, TFBN, as well as the Taiwan Labour Front and the Color Pages Women’s Vision Organization decided to join the global day of action and stage a concert in Kaohsiung on Aung San Suu Kyi’s birthday to voice their support for the democracy movement in Myanmar.
Besides performances by award-winning Amis Aboriginal singer Panai and band The Tonic, a postcard campaign will urge Aung San Suu Kyi’s release, Yang said.
Supporters of the Myanmar democracy movement previously succeeded in pressuring the military junta to release a dissident by sending postcards and letters, he said.
In a press statement, TFBN said that the government and business leaders were talking about signing a free-trade agreement with ASEAN — of which Myanmar is a member — “because they’re eyeing cheap labor they can exploit, but for us, we care more about human rights and democracy.”
Myanmar has been haunted by poverty — with a per capita GDP of just US$180 — and authoritarian rule since a military coup in 1962.
There are as many as 70,000 child soldiers, 3.5 million displaced people and more than 2,000 dissidents in prison, TFBN said.
The military junta has brutally cracked down on peaceful demonstrations for democracy and refused to recognize the results of a parliamentary election in 1990 in which the NLD won most of the seats.
The concert and related activities will take place from 4pm to 6pm at the Kaohsiung City Central Park tomorrow.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the