Social activists yesterday estimated that about 1,000 people would gather at 10am today near the Taipei 101 building in the city’s central business district to protest against widening income disparity.
The event is part of a series of protests across the Asia-Pacific region as demonstrations organized on social media platforms are planned from Tokyo to Sydney, joining a protest in London as part of the Occupy Wall Street movement.
The rallies that began on Sept. 17 in New York, where more than 700 people have been arrested, have already migrated across the US to cities including Denver, Boston and San Francisco.
According to statistics, there are 90,000 people in Taiwan with a fortune of more than NT$30 million (US$990,850).
Taipei 101 is the target because the Taiwan Stock Exchange’s headquarters, a symbol of capitalism in the eyes of the protesters, is located in the skyscraper, activists said.
As the Internet-originated event has no distinct leader to file a request to demonstrate, after negotiations with the Taipei 101 building’s security department it has been agreed that the demonstration will be held on the plaza in front of the building.
As long as the event does not disturb pedestrians and other visitors, the building’s security department would not interfere, Taipei 101 spokesperson Liu Chia-hao (劉家豪) said yesterday.
Liu said that the building would have increased security and that it would be working in tandem with police. He called on the protesters to exercise restraint and keep a level head.
In response to the event, Taipei Police Department’s Xinyi Precinct said it would not only reinforce traffic control in nearby roads, it would also have a unit of 40 police officers on standby.
The protest is set to begin at 10am with demonstrators gathering in a park near the side door of the Taipei 101 on Songzhi Road, the precinct said, adding that preliminary estimates were that about 200 to 300 people would join the gathering.
Then protesters then plan to “take over” the Taipei 101 building at 1pm by surrounding it with linked hands, according to the precinct, which added that if the event develops into a silent sit-in or a series of public speeches that infringe upon the rights of other citizens and it violates the Assembly and Parade Act (集會遊行法), legal action would be taken.
Additional reporting by Bloomberg
Translated by Jake Chung, staff writer
DIPLOMATIC MOVES: Beijing is reportedly pressing the state after reports of forming links with Taiwan, while the ministry is also planning to reopen its office in Guam soon A representative office is set to open in Somaliland at the end of this month, at the earliest, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said yesterday amid reports that Beijing is sending a diplomatic delegation to the east African country. The ministry on July 1 announced that Taiwan and Somaliland would establish representative offices, following a report by the Somaliland Chronicle Web site. It said at the time that the two nations did not plan to establish formal ties. Somaliland President Muse Bihi Abdi has instructed close confidants to explore the possibility of “mutual recognition between Taiwan and Somaliland,” the Somaliland Chronicle reported
The Supreme Court on Tuesday found four men guilty of attempted murder in the 2017 stabbing of Spanish surfer Ignacio Prio on a Pingtung County beach in the final ruling in the case, sentencing them to three-and-a-half to six years in prison. The defendants had appealed their convictions for attempted murder in the first and second rulings, which had also led to prison sentences ranging from three-and-a-half years to six years. The then-42-year-old Prio went to Jialeshui Beach (佳樂水) near Kenting (墾丁) on March 31, 2017, was attacked after he asked four men to remove their fishing lines from an area
‘IMMORAL, INSINCERE’: Huang Kun-huei said that Ma was ‘distorting history’ in claiming that Lee Teng-hui laid the foundation for the so-called ‘1992 consensus’ Former Presidential Office secretary-general Huang Kun-huei (黃昆輝) on Saturday rejected former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) claim that former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) had been a proponent of Beijing’s “one China” principle. Lee, who served as president from 1988 to 2000, died in Taipei on Thursday last week. After visiting the Taipei Guest House on Saturday to pay his respects to Lee, Ma posted on Facebook that “28 years ago on this day” Lee hosted a session of the now-defunct National Unification Council, during which he passed a resolution on the “one China” principle. That resolution became the basis of the Chinese Nationalist Party’s
NEW ERA: Taiwan, which has controlled its virus outbreak, now faces the challenge of safely resuming economic exchanges with other nations, Chang Shan-chwen said People should not focus entirely on having zero new confirmed COVID-19 cases in Taiwan, but neglect overall control over the disease situation, Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) specialist advisory panel convener Chang Shan-chwen (張上淳) said yesterday. Chang made the remark at a forum in Taipei discussing the steps Taiwan should take in the post-pandemic era, organized by the Chinese-language magazine Global Views Monthly. Chang, Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Director-General Chou Jih-haw (周志浩), and Stanford University’s Center for Policy, Outcomes and Prevention director C. Jason Wang (王智弘) each made a presentation, followed by a panel discussion with Chang, Wang and Buddhist Tzu
RSS