The Taiwan High Court yesterday said it would schedule more trial dates before the court announces its verdict on whether former Democratic Progressive Party chairman Shih Ming-teh (施明德) was guilty of violating the Assembly and Parade Act (集會遊行法) in 2006.
The court was scheduled to deliver its verdict yesterday, but judges announced the court would need to hear more arguments from both sides.
Shih launched a protest movement in August 2006 aimed at forcing then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) to resign.
On Oct. 10 of that year, Double Ten National Day, Shih led thousands of red-clad protesters at a rally outside Taipei Railway Station in an attempt to “besiege” the Presidential Office.
Prosecutors said the anti-Chen campaign organizers had not applied for a permit from the Taipei City Police Department to hold a parade or rally, as required by the Assembly and Parade Act.
Shih and others were found not guilty in February by the Taipei District Court, which said in a ruling that although the police had put up warning signs and broadcast requests for the crowd to disperse, it was unlikely that so many thousands of protesters could respond to the requests, and therefore under the “principle of proportionality” it could not prove that the organizers violated the Assembly and Parade Act.
Speaking to reporters outside the courthouse, Shih attributed the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) disappointing results in Saturday’s local elections to Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) “incompetence,” saying that the people are disappointed with his handling of the flooding caused by Typhoon Morakot in August and his overboard China-leaning policies.
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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