Several academics and members of pro-independence organizations yesterday expressed their support for prominent activist Tsay Ting-kuei (蔡丁貴), urging the government not to incarcerate him.
The Taiwan High Court found Tsay guilty of obstructing a public officer in the discharge of their duties during a demonstration on Aug. 3, 2013, when Tsay led a rally outside the legislature to protest the approval of an additional budget for the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in Gongliao District (貢寮), New Taipei City, by the administration of then-president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九).
Earlier this month, the 67-year-old chairman of the Free Taiwan Party and former professor of civil engineering received a court notice summoning him to start serving his 30-day jail term.
Although the sentence can be commuted to a fine, Tsay said he intends to serve out his term to highlight his grievances with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), adding that he does not acknowledge the party’s legitimacy to rule over Taiwanese.
Premier Lin Chuan (林全) dropped the charges against Sunflower movement protesters due to the nature of their complaints, and he should do the same for Tsay, since Tsay is a “political prisoner” fighting to further freedom and democracy in Taiwan, Taiwan Society chairman Chang Yeh-sen (張葉森) said.
“It is unfortunate that the Chinese colonial regime’s rule over Taiwanese was not terminated when we had a new government in the last election. The Democratic Progressive Party government is still full of officials with the Chinese mindset, who give their pro-China views priority over Taiwan,” former Taiwan Association of University Professors chairman and historian Cheng Chin-jen (鄭欽仁) said.
“Taiwanese must continue to fight for their liberation. We support Tsay in challenging the ‘official’ government viewpoints and his activities to topple the symbols of the KMT military dictatorship and its authoritarian rule over Taiwan,” Cheng said.
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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