The Council of Asian Liberals and Democrats (CALD) has called on President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration to grant former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) medical parole, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said yesterday.
The DPP raised the issue of Chen’s case in the recently concluded CALD Conference on Challenges to Fundamental Freedoms in Singapore and won support from the council, the party said in a press release.
According to the council’s resolution, it expressed regret over Chen’s imprisonment for more than four years under “substandard and inhumane” conditions and recognized that Chen is in poor health.
It said it supported the conclusion made by Joseph Lin — who led the US medical team that examined Chen in November — who said that the conditions under which the former president was being held constituted a “gross miscarriage of justice and human rights.”
The council “urges the government of President Ma Ying-jeou to go beyond partisan interests and immediately grant former President Chen a medical parole” and appeals that adequate and intensive medical care be given immediately to Chen, it said.
Granting Chen medical parole would “pave the way for genuine political reconciliation and maturation of Taiwanese democracy,” the council said.
Established in 1993 as a regional organization of liberal and democratic political parties and politicians in Asia, the council now has 16 members.
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:
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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