Retired soldiers yesterday marked Armed Forces Day with nationwide protests against the government’s pension reform, as they commemorated soldiers who sacrificed their lives.
In Taipei, protesters congregated in the Taipei Main Station atrium.
Led by retired army general Wu Sz-huai (吳斯懷), they came from veterans associations of different military branches and were joined by former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairwoman Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱), as well as officers from the KMT’s special Huang Fu-hsing branch, whose members are military veterans or their family members.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
The protesters began by singing the Republic of China (ROC) national anthem and some pricked their finger with a needle to dab blood on an ROC flag as a gesture of determination in their fight against pension reform.
“[President] Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) is trying to dismantle the ROC by methodically cutting off links to Chinese history,” Hung said. “She uses education to teach young people deceitful concepts and permits her government officials to insult pensioners who have retired from the civil service, military, police, fire department, or from education.”
“Over 200,000 protesters took to the streets on Sept. 3 last year, but the government did not respond to our demands throughout the year,” she said. “The DPP government kept on using the pension reform issue to villify pensioners and also wielded their majority in the Legislature to push through the Forward-looking Infrastructure Development Program budget of hundreds of millions of dollars. Therefore I urge people to come out to fight against this unfair and unjust government.”
Wu said no political party should destroy a pension system already in place, adding: “It also must not be done retroactively, because that violates the trust and the promises made by the government.”
Soldiers had given their youth and service years to the country, and time could not be turned back, Wu said, adding that the government must talk with the veterans’ groups to negotiate about pension reform and should not make decisions unilaterally.
Members of veterans’ groups held similar protests elsewhere yesterday.
In Hualien County, protesters gathered for a rally at the plaza in front of Hualien City Railway Station.
Hualien County Commissioner Fu Kun-chi (傅崐萁) and his wife, KMT Legislator Hsu Chen-wei (徐榛蔚), joined an estimated 300 retired civil servants, teachers, police and veterans for an anti-pension reform rally.
Fu raised eyebrows when he challenged Tsai: “Do not be evasive. If you have the guts, then go declare Taiwan independence.”
Fu’s remark sparked negative reactions from many netizens.
One wrote: “If you have the guts, then you should declare Hualien County independence.”
Another wrote: “Fu, if you have guts, go declare that you want unification with China” and asked: “How does Taiwan independence have anything to do with the greedy civil servants, veterans and teachers who would not give up their generous pensions?”
Additional reporting by Wang Chin-yi
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS