Veterans group 800 Heroes yesterday said it would not give in to the Taipei City Government’s demand that the group remove its tents outside the Legislative Yuan and that it would urge its supporters to hold scattered protests in different parts of the city if the tents faced compulsory removal.
The tents as of yesterday had been on the sidewalk outside the Legislative Yuan for 401 days to protest the government’s pension reform policies.
The group received a notice from the Taipei Construction Management Office on Tuesday saying that the tents are illegal because the group’s permit for using the road and setting up the temporary tents had expired on Friday last week and a grace period of three days had passed.
The notice came after the office last week removed the Alliance of Referendum for Taiwan’s tents, which had been set up on a different road outside the Legislative Yuan for almost a decade.
Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) earlier this week affirmed his determination to deal with and prevent long-term “political road-hogging” by taking firm legal action and modifying the regulations.
“We 800 Heroes strongly oppose [the demand] and will fight until the end,” said group commander Wu Chi-liang (吳其樑), a retired army lieutenant general.
“If you tear down our tents, we will go ‘plant a pot in the ground and cook rice’ in front of Taipei City Hall,” Wu said using a Chinese-language idiom used to describe a long-term protest.
Group spokesman Wu Sz-huai (吳斯懷), a retired lieutenant general, accused the city government of acting against democracy and justice, and vowed to never give in if the city government decides to forcibly remove the tents.
Wu Sz-huai said the group would mobilize more than 100,000 veterans to take to the streets and protest against the central government and the city government if the tents are removed.
Wu Chi-liang claimed that the group has always applied to use the road and set up the tents, adding that the protesters that occupied the Legislative Yuan during the Sunflower movement in 2014 were found not guilty in court, so the local government should use the same standards when dealing with 800 Heroes.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei City Councilor Chung Hsiao-ping (鍾小平) said that Ko had ordered the removal of both groups of tents for political reasons — to please President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and to gain the support of independent voters.
The Taipei Construction Management Office said the permit for the group to use the road expired on Friday last week and although the group had applied to continue using their tents in the area, the names of the applicants were different, rendering the existing tents an illegal construction.
However, as the compulsory removal of the tents would require police reinforcements, the office could not confirm when any possible action would be taken.
South Korean K-pop girl group Blackpink are to make Kaohsiung the first stop on their Asia tour when they perform at Kaohsiung National Stadium on Oct. 18 and 19, the event organizer said yesterday. The upcoming performances will also make Blackpink the first girl group ever to perform twice at the stadium. It will be the group’s third visit to Taiwan to stage a concert. The last time Blackpink held a concert in the city was in March 2023. Their first concert in Taiwan was on March 3, 2019, at NTSU Arena (Linkou Arena). The group’s 2022-2023 “Born Pink” tour set a
CPBL players, cheerleaders and officials pose at a news conference in Taipei yesterday announcing the upcoming All-Star Game. This year’s CPBL All-Star Weekend is to be held at the Taipei Dome on July 19 and 20.
The Taiwan High Court yesterday upheld a lower court’s decision that ruled in favor of former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) regarding the legitimacy of her doctoral degree. The issue surrounding Tsai’s academic credentials was raised by former political talk show host Dennis Peng (彭文正) in a Facebook post in June 2019, when Tsai was seeking re-election. Peng has repeatedly accused Tsai of never completing her doctoral dissertation to get a doctoral degree in law from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in 1984. He subsequently filed a declaratory action charging that
The Hualien Branch of the High Court today sentenced the main suspect in the 2021 fatal derailment of the Taroko Express to 12 years and six months in jail in the second trial of the suspect for his role in Taiwan’s deadliest train crash. Lee Yi-hsiang (李義祥), the driver of a crane truck that fell onto the tracks and which the the Taiwan Railways Administration's (TRA) train crashed into in an accident that killed 49 people and injured 200, was sentenced to seven years and 10 months in the first trial by the Hualien District Court in 2022. Hoa Van Hao, a
RSS