Former freeway toll collectors yesterday protested in front of the National Police Agency in Taipei to back their accusations of police persecution, saying that more than 100 former toll collectors were summoned to police stations for questioning after a demonstration last month on the Sun Yat-sen Freeway (National Freeway No. 1).
Participants in last month’s protest, which blocked several lanes of the freeway, each received a traffic ticket with a NT$6,000 fine, amounting to more than NT$600,000, members of the Freeway Toll Collector Self-Help Organization said.
Following the nation’s transition to an electronic, distance-based toll system, about 1,000 toll collectors lost their jobs.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
Labor activist Wu Jing-ru (吳靜如) said the group plans to launch a fundraising campaign to pay the fines, which are due next month.
She also called for lawyers to volunteer to help the protesters fight possible legal charges.
The group has threatened to occupy parts of the freeway again on Friday next week — a day before the nine-in-one elections — if the government does not provide a satisfactory solution.
“We hope the government does not become an accomplice in acts of persecution and force us to engage in more extreme forms of protest,” the organization’s director-general, Sun Hsiu-luan (孫秀鑾), said.
The group also announced plans to start an eight-day hunger strike on Thursday in front of the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) headquarters in Taipei.
Police officials dismissed the persecution allegations, saying that the traffic fines were levied “according to the law,” and urged protesters to stay clear of freeways.
Thirty-five earthquakes have exceeded 5.5 on the Richter scale so far this year, the most in 14 years, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said on Facebook on Thursday. A large earthquake in Hualien County on April 3 released five times as much the energy as the 921 Earthquake on Sept. 21, 1999, the agency said in its latest earthquake report for this year. Hualien County has had the most national earthquake alerts so far this year at 64, with Yilan County second with 23 and Changhua County third with nine, the agency said. The April 3 earthquake was what caused the increase in
INTIMIDATION: In addition to the likely military drills near Taiwan, China has also been waging a disinformation campaign to sow division between Taiwan and the US Beijing is poised to encircle Taiwan proper in military exercise “Joint Sword-2024C,” starting today or tomorrow, as President William Lai (賴清德) returns from his visit to diplomatic allies in the Pacific, a national security official said yesterday. Commenting on condition of anonymity, the official said that multiple intelligence sources showed that China is “highly likely” to launch new drills around Taiwan. Although the drills’ scale is unknown, there is little doubt that they are part of the military activities China initiated before Lai’s departure, they said. Beijing at the same time is conducting information warfare by fanning skepticism of the US and
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is unlikely to attempt an invasion of Taiwan during US president-elect Donald Trump’s time in office, Taiwanese and foreign academics said on Friday. Trump is set to begin his second term early next year. Xi’s ambition to establish China as a “true world power” has intensified over the years, but he would not initiate an invasion of Taiwan “in the near future,” as his top priority is to maintain the regime and his power, not unification, Tokyo Woman’s Christian University distinguished visiting professor and contemporary Chinese politics expert Akio Takahara said. Takahara made the comment at a
DEFENSE: This month’s shipment of 38 modern M1A2T tanks would begin to replace the US-made M60A3 and indigenous CM11 tanks, whose designs date to the 1980s The M1A2T tanks that Taiwan expects to take delivery of later this month are to spark a “qualitative leap” in the operational capabilities of the nation’s armored forces, a retired general told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) in an interview published yesterday. On Tuesday, the army in a statement said it anticipates receiving the first batch of 38 M1A2T Abrams main battle tanks from the US, out of 108 tanks ordered, in the coming weeks. The M1 Abrams main battle tank is a generation ahead of the Taiwanese army’s US-made M60A3 and indigenously developed CM11 tanks, which have
RSS