Falun Gong practitioners yesterday staged a mass sit-in in front of Taipei City Hall to mark the 21st anniversary of the start of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) persecution of the group’s members, calling on the world to recognize the CCP’s crime.
With the COVID-19 pandemic, the CCP’s arbitrary passage of national security legislation for Hong Kong and its violation of press freedom by banning reports of excessive water levels along the Yangtze River, which caused flooding in 27 Chinese provinces, the world has woken up to the CCP’s true evil nature, Taiwan Falun Dafa Association president Chang Chin-hwa (張錦華) told a news conference.
Dubbing this year “the year of awakening,” Chang said Falun Gong has gathered signatures from 550 lawmakers from 27 nations for a joint statement to condemn the CCP’s brutal infringement of human rights and to recognize the efforts of Falun Gong.
Of the 550 politicians, 34 are Taiwanese legislators from various parties, which places the nation fourth in terms of the number of signatures gathered, she said.
Hopefully, the world will realize that now is the time to choose virtue and justice, to eliminate the malicious party that is the CCP and to liberate the more than 1 billion Chinese, she said.
“The Qing Dynasty 120 years ago waged a war against other nations and was obliterated. Today, China is also waging a war against other nations with viruses and its reign of terror,” New School For Democracy chairman Tseng Chien-yuan (曾建元) said.
With the pandemic, Beijing’s suppression of pro-democracy Hong Kong demonstrators and the severe flooding throughout China, he believes that the CCP’s days are numbered, he said.
The US administration is mulling barring CCP members and their families from entering the US, Tseng added.
The US House of Representatives in May passed a measure that seeks to punish Chinese officials for detaining more than 1 million Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang, he said.
Tseng said he is glad that the US fired the first salvo against the CCP’s wrongdoings and human rights atrocities, and hopes the rest of the world will join in the sanctions against the CCP.
Falun Gong has long been collating information on former CCP members, some of whom did not request anonymity when they revealed the party’s vices to Falun Gong, he said.
This information is invaluable and hopefully will offer the international community a clearer roadmap in its efforts to sanction the CCP, he said.
After the guests made speeches, Falun Gong practitioners lit candles and mourned in silence the estimated more than 4,500 fellow practitioners who have reportedly been killed by the CCP.
Before the sit-in, about 1,000 Falun Gong members marched in the city’s Xinyi District (信義) to raise awareness of their cause.
CREDIT-GRABBER: China said its coast guard rescued the crew of a fishing vessel that caught fire, who were actually rescued by a nearby Taiwanese boat and the CGA Maritime search and rescue operations do not have borders, and China should not use a shipwreck to infringe upon Taiwanese sovereignty, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said yesterday. The coast guard made the statement in response to the China Coast Guard (CCG) saying it saved a Taiwanese fishing boat. The Chuan Yu No. 6 (全漁6號), a fishing vessel registered in Keelung, on Thursday caught fire and sank in waters northeast of Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台). The vessel left Keelung’s Badouzih Fishing Harbor (八斗子漁港) at 3:35pm on Sunday last week, with seven people on board — a 62-year-old Taiwanese captain surnamed Chang (張) and six
RISKY BUSINESS: The ‘incentives’ include initiatives that get suspended for no reason, creating uncertainty and resulting in considerable losses for Taiwanese, the MAC said China’s “incentives” failed to sway sentiment in Taiwan, as willingness to work in China hit a record low of 1.6 percent, a Ministry of Labor survey showed. The Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) also reported that the number of Taiwanese workers in China has nearly halved from a peak of 430,000 in 2012 to an estimated 231,000 in 2024. That marked a new low in the proportion of Taiwanese going abroad to work. The ministry’s annual survey on “Labor Life and Employment Status” includes questions respondents’ willingness to seek employment overseas. Willingness to work in China has steadily declined from
The Legislative Yuan’s Finance Committee yesterday approved proposed amendments to the Amusement Tax Act (娛樂稅法) that would abolish taxes on films, cultural activities and competitive sporting events, retaining the fee only for dance halls and golf courses. The proposed changes would set the maximum tax rate for dance halls and golf courses at 50 and 20 percent respectively, with local governments authorized to suspend the levies. Article 2 of the act says that “amusement tax shall be levied on tickets sold or fees charged by amusement places, facilities or activities” in six categories: “Cinema; professional singing, story-telling, dancing, circus, magic show, acrobatics
INFLATION UP? The IMF said CPI would increase to 1.5 percent this year, while the DGBAS projected it would rise to 1.68 percent, with GDP per capita of US$44,181 The IMF projected Taiwan’s real GDP would grow 5.2 percent this year, up from its 2.1 percent outlook in January, despite fears of global economic disruptions sparked by the US-Iran conflict. Taiwan’s consumer price index (CPI) is projected to increase to 1.5 percent, while unemployment would be 3.4 percent, roughly in line with estimates for Asia as a whole, the international body wrote in its Global Economic Outlook Report published in the US on Monday. The figures are comparatively better than the IMF outlook for the rest of the world, which pegged real GDP growth at 3.1 percent, down from 3.3 percent
RSS