About 10,000 Taiwanese expatriates are expected to return to the country to celebrate the Double Ten national day, the Overseas Compatriot Affairs Commission said.
Commission Chairman Wu Yin-yih (吳英毅) said that more than 8,000 expats had signed up to attend National Day celebrations and predicted that the number could reach 10,000, the highest in the last eight years.
Last year’s celebrations attracted about 3,000 expats, Wu said.
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) will deliver a National Day speech at the celebration rally in front of the Presidential Office next Friday and will lead the participants in chanting “Long Live the Republic of China” (ROC) and “Long Live Taiwanese Democracy,” Presidential Office Spokesman Wang Yu-chi (王郁琦) said.
Ma said last week that this year’s celebrations were significant to the country and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) because it would be the first National Day since the party that had founded the ROC regained power after eight years.
The practice of the president addressing the National Day rally had been observed for years until former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) canceled his speech last year to avoid a repeat of the disturbance caused by his opponents during a speech he made on the same occasion in 2006.
Chen and his predecessor, Lee Teng-hui (李登輝), have said they would not attend this year’s ceremony, Deputy Minister of the Interior Lai Feng-wei (賴峰偉) said a day earlier.
Legislative Speaker Wang Jyn-ping (王金平), who is also the chief organizer of the National Day Celebration Committee, said earlier this month that the budget for this year’s festivities was NT$45.09 million (US$1.48 million), including NT$11 million for a fireworks display.
The fireworks show will take place in Chiayi City and a party will be held in Hualien County in the evening. A military parade will not be part of this year’s program.
A crowd of over 200 people gathered outside the Taipei District Court as two sisters indicted for abusing a 1-year-old boy to death attended a preliminary hearing in the case yesterday afternoon. The crowd held up signs and chanted slogans calling for aggravated penalties in child abuse cases and asking for no bail and “capital punishment.” They also held white flowers in memory of the boy, nicknamed Kai Kai (剴剴), who was allegedly tortured to death by the sisters in December 2023. The boy died four months after being placed in full-time foster care with the
Taiwan yesterday condemned the recent increase in Chinese coast guard-escorted fishing vessels operating illegally in waters around the Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) in the South China Sea. Unusually large groupings of Chinese fishing vessels began to appear around the islands on Feb. 15, when at least six motherships and 29 smaller boats were sighted, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said in a news release. While CGA vessels were dispatched to expel the Chinese boats, Chinese coast guard ships trespassed into Taiwan’s restricted waters and unsuccessfully attempted to interfere, the CGA said. Due to the provocation, the CGA initiated an operation to increase
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