The New Power Party (NPP) yesterday called on the government to amend legislation relating to Hong Kong and Macau following the arrest of tycoon Jimmy Lai (黎智英), founder of Next Digital group.
The government should push through proposed amendments to Article 18 of the Act Governing Relations With Hong Kong and Macau (香港澳門關係條例) to make it easier to offer help to residents of the territories, it said.
The article stipulates that the government can offer help to residents of Hong Kong and Macau whose security and freedom are endangered due to political reasons.
Photo: Huang Mei-chu, Taipei Times
Lai’s arrest on Monday and the subsequent arrests of Hong Kong democracy advocates, which has severely harmed press freedom and free speech in the territory, has made the need to assist Hong Kong residents more urgent, it said.
Following Lai, Hong Kong police arrested advocacy group members Andy Li (李宇軒) of Hong Kong Story and Lee Tsung-tzu (李宗澤) and now-disbanded Demosisto founding member Agnes Chow (周庭) on charges of colluding with foreign forces.
“We strongly condemn this misuse of the Hong Kong National Security Law to suppress dissidents,” the NPP said.
It called on legislators across party lines to pass a new amendment to the article in the upcoming interim session to set clear conditions and procedures for Hong Kong and Macau residents to apply for asylum in Taiwan.
Separately, the party said that it would elect a new chairperson within three weeks, after former chairman Hsu Yung-ming (徐永明) quit the party on Aug. 1 over his alleged involvement in a corruption and bribery case.
The scandal drove the party to the brink of implosion after the departure of Taipei City Councilors Huang Yu-fen (黃郁芬) and Lin Ying-men (林穎孟) on Tuesday last week, followed by the resignation of all 10 members on its Decisionmaking Committee a day later.
Addressing speculation that former NPP executive chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) might be tapped for the position again, NPP caucus whip Chiu Hsien-chih (邱顯智) yesterday said there were no such plans at present.
Several party members have expressed an interest in running for chairperson, and the party hopes a new chairperson would be chosen quickly, he said.
Asked whether the party was planning reforms — and whether forthcoming reforms would require Huang’s leadership — Chiu said the party’s concern at present was to engage in introspection and to regain the public’s trust.
Due to the election occurring between terms for party members, the new chairperson would hold the position until Feb. 28 next year, rather than the normal two-year term the position entails, he said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching