Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Tainan city councilors yesterday panned the city government’s removal of Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) statues from 14 junior-high and elementary schools in the municipality on Saturday, branding Tainan Mayor William Lai (賴清德) a “terrorist” and calling him “Emperor Lai.”
KMT city councilors Lu Kun-fu (盧崑福), Wang Chia-chen (王家貞) and Tsai Shu-hui (蔡淑惠) said at a news conference in Tainan that the removal was arbitrarily executed without regard or respect for the schools’ autonomy, adding that Lai’s decision fostered further conflict between members of the pan-green and pan-blue camps.
Having the statues wrapped in white cloth prior to removal made them resemble mummies, the councilors said, comparing Lai to the extremist Islamic State group, which has destroyed historical artifacts in Iraq.
The city councilors called the operation “too secretive,” as the schools were not notified of the removals in advance.
In response, Lai said the decision to remove the statues was not made on a whim, as it was announced on Feb. 28 while he was attending a memorial event to mark the 228 Incident.
The statues were removed in the interests of transitional justice, Lai said, adding that schools are intended to be places to pass knowledge on to students.
“Schools should not be places promoting political adoration, especially the adoration of Chiang,” Lai said.
The removals were conducted over the weekend to minimize class disruptions, he said, adding that the workers wrapped the statues to protect them from damage.
Opposing opinions are inevitable when a mayor decides to do something, he said, adding that he would gladly listen if such opinions were constructive, but that he would not be baited by aggressive commentary seeking to mislead the public.
Separately yesterday, in response to a question posed by Taiwan Solidarity Union Legislator Lai Chen-chang (賴振昌), Minister of Culture Hung Meng-chi (洪孟啟) said that each statue has its own history, and he urged the nation to refrain from thinking politically about the statues.
When Lai Chen-chang further inquired as to whether the presence of Chiang’s statues in school campuses was itself a political consideration, Hung said that “has its own historical background.”
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