A Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Taipei City councilor and a group of bloggers yesterday protested against China’s censorship of Plurk, a micro-blogging service similar to Twitter, and urged the public to voice their opposition to China’s move to curb freedom of speech.
They said China tried to block news of the SARS epidemic when the outbreak began in 2003, and it could ban Plurk to block the news if swine flu spreads to the country.
“This incident reminds us how China continues to be a threat to freedom of speech,” DPP Taipei City Councilor Yen Sheng-kuan (顏聖冠) told a press conference at the Taipei City Council.
Yang Hui-ju (楊蕙如), a Web manager for former DPP presidential candidate Frank Hsieh’s (謝長廷) campaign, said Plurk had become one of the most popular messaging services in Taiwan and the latest communication channel for independence activists.
A group of pro-independence plurkers even initiated an online activity, inviting other users to change their Plurk ID to the famous statement by free speech pioneer Deng Nan-jung (鄭南榕) — “My name is … I support Taiwanese independence” — on Plurk earlier this month to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Deng’s death.
“We suspect that China may have noticed our activity and become wary of Plurk becoming a powerful platform for discussion about Taiwanese independence,” she said.
Yang said many DPP politicians, including Hsieh and former premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌), have joined the trend and become plurkers.
The DPP also set up a Plurk account to communicate with its supporters, she added.
The micro-messaging service posted an article titled “China, Plurk wants to make peace, not war! Please lift the ban!” on its Web site on Monday to share concerns about China’s ban.
It urged users to help spread the news and pressure China to remove the ban.
“We still have not received information from official Chinese sources on what prompted the ban. Was it some Plurkers talking negatively about China?” it said.
A total lunar eclipse coinciding with the Lantern Festival on March 3 would be Taiwan’s most notable celestial event this year, the Taipei Astronomical Museum said, urging skywatchers not to miss it. There would be four eclipses worldwide this year — two solar eclipses and two lunar eclipses — the museum’s Web site says. Taiwan would be able to observe one of the lunar eclipses in its entirety on March 3. The eclipse would be visible as the moon rises at 5:50pm, already partly shaded by the Earth’s shadow, the museum said. It would peak at about 7:30pm, when the moon would
Taiwan’s Li Yu-hsiang performs in the men’s singles figure skating short program at the Milano-Cortina Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, on Tuesday. Li finished 24th with a score of 72.41 to advance to Saturday’s free skate portion of the event. He is the first Taiwanese to qualify for the free skate of men’s singles figure skating at the Olympics since David Liu in 1992.
The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) yesterday held a ceremony marking the delivery of its 11th Anping-class offshore patrol vessel Lanyu (蘭嶼艦), saying it would boost Taiwan’s ability to respond to Beijing’s “gray zone” tactics. Ocean Affairs Council Deputy Minister Chang Chung-Lung (張忠龍) presided over the CGA event in the Port of Kaoshiung. Representatives of the National Security Council also attended the event. Designed for long-range and protracted patrol operations at sea, the Lanyu is a 65.4m-long and 14.8m-wide ship with a top speed of 44 knots (81.5kph) and a cruising range of 2,000 nautical miles (3704km). The vessel is equipped with a
Two siblings in their 70s were injured yesterday when they opened a parcel and it exploded, police in Yilan said, adding the brother and sister were both in stable condition. The two siblings, surnamed Hung (洪), had received the parcel two days earlier but did not open it until yesterday, the first day of the Lunar New Year holiday in Taiwan, police said. Chen Chin-cheng (陳金城), head of the Yilan County Government Police Bureau, said the package bore no postmark or names and was labeled only with the siblings’ address. Citing the findings of a
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