A group of democracy activists and members of the Taiwanese National Party (TNP, 台灣民族黨) held a rally featuring friendly gestures and offers of cooperation against Chinese aggression at Vietnam’s representative office in Taipei yesterday.
In a dramatic departure from government’s stance, TNP executives said: “Taiwanese are brothers in arms with Vietnamese. We should work together to fight against Chinese hegemony in the region.”
The pro-Taiwan independence TNP and its supporters headed to the Vietnam Economic and Cultural Office (VECO), Vietnam’s de facto embassy, on Sungjiang Road in Taipei yesterday morning for the rally.
Besides the offer to forge an alliance against China, the group also wanted to make clear to Vietnam’s government and its people that “Taiwanese are not Chinese,” and “Taiwan and China are different and separate entities.”
TNP Chairman Tsua Gim-liong (蔡金龍) also asked the Vietnamese government to do everything it can to protect the Taiwanese business community in Vietnam to safeguard their lives, property and investments.
Tsua said the TNP handed a statement to VECO official Hoang Nhu Ly.
“We assured the Vietnamese official that Taiwanese and Vietnamese have many cultural affinities, and through marriages in recent years, we have become relatives in a big family,” he said.
“Taiwanese and Vietnamese also have much in common, in that we both have a long history of defending our homelands against Chinese aggression and imperial expansionism,” he said.
Tsua said it is a shame that some Vietnamese could not differentiate between Taiwanese and Chinese, which led to attacks and looting of Taiwanese companies in Vietnam last week.
He said that the main cause of the demonstrations and ensuing riots was China’s hegemony and belligerence in the South China Sea, and Taiwanese became victims due to the ruling Nationalist Chinese Party (KMT) government still clinging to its “Republic of China” (ROC) claim, and falsely representing Taiwanese as Chinese in the international arena.
The TNP rally was joined by a number of academics who are advocates of Taiwan’s democracy and political sovereignty.
These included National Taiwan University of Science and Technology computer science professor Ted Lau (劉重義), writer and former political prisoner under the KMT regime Kao Chin-lang (高金郎) and National Taiwan University business management professor Chen Yong-chang (陳永昌).
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