A staunch supporter of NBA player Jeremy Lin (林書豪) suffered another setback this week in his effort to establish a political party named after the first NBA player of Taiwanese descent, after the Taipei High Administrative Court on Tuesday upheld a decision of the Ministry of the Interior to reject his application to form such a party.
The case is still subject to appeal.
The applicant, surnamed Chu (朱), took his bid to establish the “Jeremy Lin Party” to the court after his application was repeatedly turned down by the ministry last year.
Chu first submitted his application on March 19 last year along with a constitution of his proposed party and a roster of its founders, as required by the Civil Associations Act (人民團體法). The ministry vetoed the application on the ground that using someone’s name as the appellation of a political party ran counter to the law and the common practices of democratic politics.
Stepping up his effort, Chu changed his first name to “Lin-shu-hao,” using the same Chinese character as Lin’s Chinese name. When he submitted his application the following month, he stated in the party charter that his purpose in establishing such a political association was to “emulate the spirit of Jeremy Lin.”
However, the ministry again denied the application, saying Chu’s proposed party did not conform to Article 44 and 45 of the Civil Associations Act, which stipulates that a political association should be “an association organized with a view to help form political volition and to promote political participation for the citizens” and “with an intention to recommend candidates to participate in public elections.”
After reviewing the ministry’s reasons for rejection, the court determined that the “Jeremy Lin Party” did not tally with the founding tenet of political associations and that its title — both in Mandarin and English — being completely identical to the name of the NBA player risked misleading the public.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods