The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday at a rally threw its support behind the students in the “Occupy the Legislature” movement and said it would refuse to negotiate with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) until President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) apologizes for his handling of the controversial cross-strait service trade agreement.
Almost every senior DPP member attended the rally and called for national support for the student movement, with DPP Chairman Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) saying that the occupation was “a right thing to do” and not “a violent act,” as claimed by the KMT and several media outlets.
“We’re not leaving as long as the students are still here,” Su said.
Photo: Lo Pei-der, Taipei Times
The chairman said that the students were not “politically motivated” by the DPP, as the KMT had claimed.
However, the DPP shared the same values and ideals as the students and that was why it offered its unconditional support to the movement.
Former DPP chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said she had been a professor for 15 years and the students’ writing a new chapter in history was one of the most touching experiences in her life.
Tsai also urged Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) to skip a meeting with Ma and Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) scheduled for 11am.
Both Tsai and former premier Yu Shyi-kun (游錫堃) said the controversy related to the cross-strait service trade agreement was not a dispute between different branches of the government, but one between Ma and mainstream public opinion.
Yu called for Ma to learn from the example of former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝), who met with the leaders of the Wild Lily student movement in 1990 and listened to what they had to say in a meeting that eventually contributed to legislative reform.
Wang did skip the meeting with the president, urging Ma to respect the voice of the people.
He pledged to convene inter-party negotiations as soon as possible to try to resolve the crisis.
Inter-party negotiation would not be necessary if Ma refuses to apologize and if the agreement is not withdrawn from a plenary session, said DPP caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘), who did not attend a meeting of caucus whips that Wang convened at his residence yesterday afternoon.
To avoid interfering with the students’ activities, the DPP mobilized thousands of people across the country to express their support for the students in a rally organized next to the students’ protest site outside of the Legislative Yuan compound in Taipei.
The crowd was visibly smaller than the students’ rally and the party’s introduction of its candidates in the seven-in-one elections drew the ire of nearby students.
Some students said the DPP tried to turn the rally into part of its election campaign.
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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
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