Independent Taipei mayoral candidate Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) should take a clear position on the future of the Wenmeng Building (文萌樓), activists from the Collective of Sex Workers and Supporters (COSWAS) civic said yesterday.
The activists intercepted Ko on his way into a news conference, calling on him to promise — if elected — to use the Taipei City Government’s power of eminent domain to appropriate the property.
The former brothel in Taipei’s Datong District (大同) was designated a historic site in 2006 and now serves as the headquarters of the collective.
However, a private investor who purchased the building several years ago has sought to evict the organization, sparking a protracted legal battle.
Taipei Department of Cultural Affairs Commissioner Liu Wei-kung (劉維公) promised late last month to begin the process of appropriation by early next month if the owner continues to refuse to cooperate with the collective in preserving the site.
“Since we starting contacting Ko’s campaign team in September, it has shown no signs of his intention to continue the current municipal policy [toward the Wenmeng Building],” COSWAS chief executive Chung Chun-chu (鐘君竺) said.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei mayoral candidate Sean Lien (連勝文) has come out in support of the current policy, Chung said, adding that Ko’s camp has refused to answer questions and broken promises to meet with activists, amid hints that people within his camp favor changing course on the policy.
Ko’s executive campaign director Yao Li-ming (姚立明) on Monday reportedly said that the Wenmeng Building policy was not “irreversible,” making activists feel obliged to speak out, she added.
When confronted by the activists, Ko called a campaign official responsible for interacting with civic groups and handed his smartphone to the activists before proceeding into the news conference.
“I have never avoided any questions,” Ko said. “This particular case has never come up in our internal discussions.”
He said that his campaign would look into the issue as soon as possible after Saturday’s elections are over.
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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