Following the removal of a ban on modifications to Taiwanese passports, members of the Taiwan Passport Sticker Movement yesterday called for the annulment of Article 160 of the Criminal Code, which they said could cause the movement’s supporters to be sentenced to prison terms.
A message was posted on the movement’s Facebook page, reading: “Today marks the 27th anniversary of freedom advocate Deng Nan-jung’s [鄭南榕] martyrdom. We invite all of you to continue Deng’s lifelong mission to fight for ‘100 percent freedom of speech’ and urge legislators to abolish Article 160 of the Criminal Code, which is 100 times more likely to suppress freedom of speech than the Enforcement Rules of the Passport Act [護照條例施行細則].”
The article stipulates that people who insult the Republic of China (ROC) by means of damaging, removing or dishonoring its national emblem or flag can be punished by jail terms of up to one year, detention or a fine not exceeding NT$300.
The article stipulates that people who insult ROC founding father Sun Yat-sen (孫中山) can be subjected to the same punishment.
The movement issued the statement one day after the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee approved a proposal to annul Article 3 of the Enforcement Rules, which was added by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs last year in a supposed attempt to clamp down on the sticker movement.
The movement said that a prosecutor last year charged one of its members with violating the article and publicly insulting the ROC’s emblem, after the defendant uploaded a picture of his passport to Facebook, showing that the word “China” on the ROC seal was covered by a sticker that read “Taiwan” and the national emblem was covered by a round orange sticker.
However, the prosecutor did not indict the man because the photograph was uploaded from Australia, the movement added.
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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