Dozens of animal rights activists coordinated through the Internet launched the Animal Protection Policy Watch Alliance yesterday, calling on mayoral and councilor candidates taking part in next month’s special municipality elections to promise better treatment of animals.
“It’s shocking to know that around 100,000 stray animals — mostly cats and dogs — are subject to mercy killings each year,” co-founder of the alliance Ho Tsung-hsun (何宗勳) said. “The current Animal Protection Act (動物保護法) offers no protection at all to the right to survival of animals — we hope that future special municipality mayors will reduce the number of animals killed, and develop animal protection policies that are based on the ideas of animal rights.”
Another co-founder of the -alliance, Huang Tai-shan (黃泰山) said that the alliance plans to invite all candidates participating in the elections to sign letters of undertaking to offer more protection to animals once they are elected.
PHOTO: CNA
“At the moment, we would ask them to create animal protection agencies in their respective cities and a police force specially focused on animal protection,” Huang said.
He said that the alliance will publish a list of animal-friendly candidates based on candidates’ responses to their demands before polling day on Nov. 27, and urge animal lovers to form a voting bloc to support animal-friendly candidates.
“We will continue to monitor the animal protection policies of local and central governments after this coming election,” Huang said.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
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