“Brutal anti-democratic” acts that defaced a statue of the nation’s founding father cannot erase the fact that Taiwan shares a deep history with Sun Yat-sen (孫逸仙) and the Chinese revolution, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said yesterday.
Many people in Taiwan had helped repatriate Taiwan to the Republic of China (ROC), such as Lien Chen-tung (連震東), Hsieh Tung-min (謝東閔) and Lee You-pang (李友邦), Ma said at a ceremony in Taipei commemorating the 89th anniversary of Sun’s death.
Eighteen delegates from Taiwan attended the 1946 People’s Assembly to ratify the ROC Constitution, and numerous Taiwanese had also helped in campaigns launched by former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) during the Second Sino-Japanese War, all of which illustrate the bond Taiwan shares with Sun’s revolution, Ma said.
Photo: Fan Pin-chao, Taipei Times
Large portraits of Taiwanese who have fought for the nation, including Chiang Wei-shui (蔣渭水), Monaludo (莫那魯道), Lo Fu-hsing (羅福星) and Liao Chin-ping (廖進平) have also hung outside the KMT’s headquarters since Ma’s first term as KMT chairman in 2005.
“We are always thankful for what these forerunners of democracy did for Taiwan,” Ma said.
His comments were seen as a rebuke to Alliance of Referendum for Taiwan members who, led by alliance convener Tsay Ting-kuei (蔡丁貴), toppled a statue of Sun in the center of a Greater Tainan park on Feb. 23, saying it had a damaged base and posed a risk to public safety.
Pro-localization groups had complained that the statue overshadowed the commemorative bust of 228 Incident hero Tang Te-chang (湯德章), for whom the park is named.
Ma said he wondered how those who toppled the statue “could face Chiang Wei-shuei, who is commonly called the “Sun Yat-sen of Taiwan” after such act of “anti-democratic brutality.”
Another commemorative event for Sun was held by the New Party and other organizations to back calls for the Greater Tainan Government to address the incident.
Such an incident should not have happened in a democratic country, New Party Chairman Yok Mu-ming (郁慕明) said.
Yok said Sun’s statue must be restored and that there would be demonstrations if action was not taken.
China Unification Promotion Party leader Chang An-le (張安樂) also protested what he said was a lack of action by the Greater Tainan Government.
He visited the park yesterday to pay his respects at the site and shouted a round of slogans.
He then gave Tainan Secretariat Secretary-General Hsiao Po-jen (蕭博仁) a letter of complaint.
Meanwhile, the Filipino Chinese Cultural and Economic Association and the Sun Yat-sen Society in the Philippines paid for a notice in Chinese-language newspapers yesterday that condemned the alliance for downing Sun’s statue.
“We roundly condemn the barbaric act that has angered all Chinese compatriots in the country and abroad,” the notice said, adding that the act was a “release of barbarism by people walking into the dead end of Taiwanese independence.”
The two organizations called for the alliance members involved to apologize publicly and to have the statue repaired.
ECHOVIRUS 11: The rate of enterovirus infections in northern Taiwan increased last week, with a four-year-old girl developing acute flaccid paralysis, the CDC said Two imported cases of chikungunya fever were reported last week, raising the total this year to 13 cases — the most for the same period in 18 years, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday. The two cases were a Taiwanese and a foreign national who both arrived from Indonesia, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The 13 cases reported this year are the most for the same period since chikungunya was added to the list of notifiable communicable diseases in October 2007, she said, adding that all the cases this year were imported, including 11 from
Prosecutors in New Taipei City yesterday indicted 31 individuals affiliated with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) for allegedly forging thousands of signatures in recall campaigns targeting three Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers. The indictments stem from investigations launched earlier this year after DPP lawmakers Su Chiao-hui (蘇巧慧) and Lee Kuen-cheng (李坤城) filed criminal complaints accusing campaign organizers of submitting false signatures in recall petitions against them. According to the New Taipei District Prosecutors Office, a total of 2,566 forged recall proposal forms in the initial proposer petition were found during the probe. Among those
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) today condemned the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) after the Czech officials confirmed that Chinese agents had surveilled Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) during her visit to Prague in March last year. Czech Military Intelligence director Petr Bartovsky yesterday said that Chinese operatives had attempted to create the conditions to carry out a demonstrative incident involving Hsiao, going as far as to plan a collision with her car. Hsiao was vice president-elect at the time. The MAC said that it has requested an explanation and demanded a public apology from Beijing. The CCP has repeatedly ignored the desires
The Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant’s license has expired and it cannot simply be restarted, the Executive Yuan said today, ahead of national debates on the nuclear power referendum. The No. 2 reactor at the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant in Pingtung County was disconnected from the nation’s power grid and completely shut down on May 17, the day its license expired. The government would prioritize people’s safety and conduct necessary evaluations and checks if there is a need to extend the service life of the reactor, Executive Yuan spokeswoman Michelle Lee (李慧芝) told a news conference. Lee said that the referendum would read: “Do