The legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee passed the preliminary review of a draft act to designate Armed Forces Day — which is commemorated on Sept. 3 — as a public holiday, taking effect next year if the draft act clears the legislative floor.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lin Yu-fang (林郁方) submitted the draft, saying that he proposed renaming Armed Forces Day as “Memorial Day for the War Dead and Armed Forces” and making it a public holiday to commemorate soldiers who have died in battle for the nation.
The committee passed the proposal, but dropped the name change, he said.
Originally celebrated as the “Victory over Japan Day” to mark the end of World War II, the Armed Forces Day — renamed in 1955 — grants military personnel a day off work, while relevant institutions may hold celebratory activities according to the Order to Implement Commemoration Days and Holidays (紀念日及節日實施辦法), he said.
He said that the Taiwan would not have survived without the soldiers who sacrificed their lives, but that the public has grown numb to their contribution because Armed Forces Day is not a national holiday.
Ministry of the Interior Director of Civil Affairs Lin Ching-chi (林清淇) said that if the draft act were passed, there would be 117 public holidays next year, which would violate a resolution the Legislative Yuan made in 2000 that caps annual public holidays at 116 days.
Saying that Teachers’ Day is not celebrated as a national holiday, he questioned the designation of Armed Forces Day as an official holiday, but added that the ministry would respect the legislature’s decision.
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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