The high-profile trial of eight young activists charged over an alleged incident involving China’s Taiwan Affairs Office Minister Zhang Zhijun (張志軍) began yesterday.
On June 26 last year, members of the Black Island National Youth Front allegedly blocked a road by chaining themselves together before Zhang’s tour of New Taipei City’s Wulai District (烏來) — an Atayal Aboriginal village.
Despite being swiftly removed and arrested by police officers, the activists managed to delay Zhang’s visit to the village by 20 minutes.
Photo: Chen Chih-chu, Taipei Times
Eight group members — including students Dennis Wei (魏揚) and Lai Ping-yu (賴品妤) — were indicted last month on criminal charges of coercion (強制罪) and obstruction of public traffic and communication (妨礙公共交通往來).
Group members played a key role in last year’s Sunflower movement, in which student-led protesters in Taipei occupied the legislature’s main chamber for nearly 23 days in March and April over the government’s handling of the cross-strait service trade pact.
The activists yesterday said that while their blockade denied pedestrian and vehicular access to Wulai, their goal was to stop President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration from “incessantly leaning toward China politically and economically.”
They asked if the administration was trying to “prevent ambassadors from the ‘celestial kingdom’ from hearing Taiwanese voices,” using an archaic term for China.
“Since the [Chinese] special ambassador was in Taiwan to discuss important issues involving economic trade — which would create a large impact on people’s livelihoods — why would the government not allow people to express their opinions?” Wei asked.
Lai said that citizens should have the right to express their opinions through protests and demonstrations, and accused the government of abusing its power through judicial channels.
Human rights lawyer Greg Yo (尤伯翔), one of the volunteer lawyers on the case, said that it was “deeply regretful” that the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office decided to indict the activists, adding that he believed that the court would protect their freedom of speech.
If found guilty, the activists could be sentenced to up to three years in prison for coercion, and up to five years in prison for obstruction of public traffic and communication.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
RSS