The removal by staff at the National Chengchi University of fliers listing names of people killed in the 228 Incident drew remarks from student activists yesterday.
“We demand that the school president, the chief of police and the head military training officer sincerely come forward to apologize for what happened on [Friday] afternoon. Before then, we will not accept any private benefits or meetings — nor will we take down any videos or fliers,” the National Chengchi University Wildfire Front (政大野火陣線) said in a statement.
The group said that school officials offered to reserve a bulletin board for their fliers if they took down online videos showing extended arguments with campus police.
Photo provided by National Chengchi University Wildfire Front
The videos show the university’s chief military training officer, Chang Hui-ling (張惠玲), and campus police officers tearing fliers off of campus bulletin boards, saying that students were “stirring up trouble” and threatening to force them off campus if they did not show their student identification cards.
In one video a campus officer waves one of the fliers and said it was against university rules because it was taped — not tacked — to the bulletin board.
The fliers listed the names and backgrounds of victims of the 228 Incident, which is commemorated today.
The 228 Incident refers to the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) suppression of a civil uprising, which started on Feb. 27, 1947, marking the beginning of the White Terror era.
The conflict over posting the fliers on the school’s bulletin boards came after students on Friday plastered a sculpture of Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) with fliers, sparking a reaction from campus police, who defended Chiang’s legacy in a shouting match shown in another video students posted online.
The sculpture was later covered with a black tarp and roped off.
National Chengchi University was quoted in the Chinese-language United Daily News as saying that while students did not have to apply to post fliers, fliers posted by the group were against university regulations, because they did not include the name of the posting group.
However, campus police over-reacted, based on the video posted by students, the school said, adding that they raised their voices “a little too loudly.”
“The school is backing the military training officer by saying that she did not tear down the fliers because of content. However, there were other fliers on the side which did not state the name of the posting group, which shows that the officer was selectively tearing down the 228 fliers,” said National Chengchi University Law Professor Liu Hung-en (劉宏恩).
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods