Independent Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) was yesterday greeted by protesters as he entered a city council meeting, following the arrest of the last of nine South Korean labor activists that morning.
About 50 protesters pushed against a cordon of police officers outside the council venue after Ko accepted their petitions, shouting slogans accusing the city government of acting as a “shield” and “thug” for corporations.
While Ko was quickly hustled into the building, some members of his entourage were temporarily trapped between protesters and police, with protester chants echoing through the council’s entrance hall during a pre-scheduled city press conference.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
In response to protester demands that charges against South Korean labor activist Lee Sang-aun be dropped, Ko said that he had not made the decision to detain Lee.
Lee was detained after attempting to enter a shareholders’ meeting of the Yuen Foong Yu (YFY) Group, whose subsidiary E-Ink Holdings owns the South Korea-based Hydis Technologies Co Ltd — a plasma display manufacturer.
E-Ink’s decision to close the Hydis factory in Icheon earlier this year led to the laying off of hundreds of workers, with several waves of South Korean labor activists traveling to Taiwan to stage protests with the help of local labor activists.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
After Lee’s detention, activists protested first outside Taipei City Hall before moving to the city council chambers to wait for Ko’s entrance.
Labor activist Lu Chih-hung (盧其宏) called on city police to immediately drop the charges against Lee, saying that he had held a letter of attorney entitling him to represent a stockholder in the corporation and present worker demands to the company’s management.
“What the police were preventing was a worker presenting his views to his boss,” he said, accusing the police of acting as “private guards” for the corporation.
Levying charges against Lee following shoving between activists and police at the shareholders’ meeting was “disproportionate,” he said.
Lu added that the Social Order Maintenance Act (社會秩序維護法) cited by police was normally used only in the event of residential disturbances and did not warrant the mass of police officers that confronted activists.
About 50 police officers stood in rows opposite the protesters outside the council chambers entrance.
Protesters also condemned a similar earlier arrest of eight South Korean Hydis labor representatives.
Lee is the last remaining South Korean representative, following their expulsion from Taiwan last week.
There are 77 incidents of Taiwanese travelers going missing in China between January last year and last month, the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) said. More than 40 remain unreachable, SEF Secretary-General Luo Wen-jia (羅文嘉) said on Friday. Most of the reachable people in the more than 30 other incidents were allegedly involved in fraud, while some had disappeared for personal reasons, Luo said. One of these people is Kuo Yu-hsuan (郭宇軒), a 22-year-old Taiwanese man from Kaohsiung who went missing while visiting China in August. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office last month said in a news statement that he was under investigation
‘JOINT SWORD’: Whatever President Lai says in his Double Ten speech, China would use it as a pretext to launch ‘punishment’ drills for his ‘separatist’ views, an official said China is likely to launch military drills this week near Taiwan, using President William Lai’s (賴清德) upcoming national day speech as a pretext to pressure the nation to accept its sovereignty claims, Taiwanese officials said. China in May launched “punishment” drills around Taiwan shortly after Lai’s inauguration, in what Beijing said was a response to “separatist acts,” sending heavily armed warplanes and staging mock attacks as state media denounced newly inaugurated Lai. The May drills were dubbed “Joint Sword — 2024A” and drew concerns from capitals, including Washington. Lai is to deliver a key speech on Thursday in front of the Presidential Office
An aviation jacket patch showing a Formosan black bear punching Winnie the Pooh has become popular overseas, including at an aviation festival held by the Japan Air Self-Defense Force at the Ashiya Airbase yesterday. The patch was designed last year by Taiwanese designer Hsu Fu-yu (徐福佑), who said that it was inspired by Taiwan’s countermeasures against frequent Chinese military aircraft incursions. The badge shows a Formosan black bear holding a Republic of China flag as it punches Winnie the Pooh — a reference to Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) — who is dressed in red and is holding a honey pot with
Taiwan was listed in 14th place among the world's wealthiest country in terms of GDP per capita, in the latest rankings released on Monday by Forbes magazine. Taiwan's GDP per capita was US$76,860, which put it at No. 14 on the list of the World's 100 Richest Countries this year, one spot above Hong Kong with US$75,130. The magazine's list of the richest countries in the world is compiled based on GDP per capita data, as estimated by the IMF. However, for a more precise measure of a nation's wealth, the magazine also considers purchasing power parity, which is a metric used to
RSS