Culture preservation groups and Taoyuan residents yesterday protested a decision by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taoyuan Mayor Simon Chang (張善政) to remove items from a local Shinto shrine, while academics said that Japanese who travel to Taiwan to worship fear that all the shrine’s deities might be removed.
Fu Jen Catholic University law professor Yao Meng-chang (姚孟昌) said that since Chang became mayor, the city government has restricted freedom of religion by targeting places of worship that are important to the community.
The deities are facing expulsion to Japan, Yao said, referring to a shrine on Hutou Mountain (虎頭山) in the city’s Taoyuan District (桃園).
Photo: CNA
Protesters called the removal a “crude destruction of a cultural treasure.”
Meng said that many foreigners, including Chinese and Thai Buddhists, as well as Hindus from India, have come to him voicing concern over the city’s removal of deities and their looming return to their countries of origin.
“They are worried that their deities, their worship, could be banned,” he said.
Figurines of deities that are predominantly worshiped by foreigners in Taiwan pose no threat to social order, but the Chang administration does not respect their right to have places of worship in Taoyuan, he said.
The city government’s policy seeks to erase the collective memory of local events, he said, calling its actions unethical.
The National Human Rights Commission and the Executive Yuan should investigate the matter, he said.
The statement came after days of protests near the shrine, with demonstrators holding signs with slogans such as: “The Constitution guarantees freedom of religion,” “Why can a Japanese deity not reside in a Japanese shrine?” and “The Taoyuan City Government violates my freedom to worship.”
One protester told reporters that the shrine is the best preserved place of Shinto worship in Taiwan, saying that it attracts many visitors on weekends, including cosplayers and amateur photographers.
The protests began after Chang said that people had complained about the shrine, announcing that some items, including figurines of the deity Amaterasu Okami, would be removed.
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus in the Taoyuan City Council condemned the move, saying in a statement that the site, unlike many other Shinto shrines in Taiwan, was not dismantled in the 1950s because it was forcibly transformed into a martyrs’ shrine commemorating veterans of the Chinese Civil War.
It was reverted back to its original purpose under the administration of former Taoyuan mayor Cheng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) of the DPP, but with KMT back in power, the city government has embarked on a mission of “cultural cleansing,” the DPP caucus said.
“Some KMT officials still strongly cling to their outdated, feudal viewpoints of being Chinese,” which motivated the Chang administration to work toward removing the shrine’s deities, the DPP officials said.
A fugitive in a suspected cosmetic surgery fraud case today returned to Taiwan from Canada, after being wanted for six years. Internet celebrity Su Chen-tuan (蘇陳端), known as Lady Nai Nai (貴婦奈奈), and her former boyfriend, plastic surgeon Paul Huang (黃博健), allegedly defrauded clients and friends of about NT$1 billion (US$30.66 million). Su was put on a wanted list in 2019 when she lived in Toronto, Canada, after failing to respond to subpoenas and arrest warrants from the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office. Su arrived at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport at 5am today on an EVA Air flight accompanied by a
A 79-year-old woman died today after being struck by a train at a level crossing in Taoyuan, police said. The woman, identified by her surname Wang (王), crossed the tracks even though the barriers were down in Jhongli District’s (中壢) Neili (內壢) area, the Taoyuan Branch of the Railway Police Bureau said. Surveillance footage showed that the railway barriers were lowered when Wang entered the crossing, but why she ventured onto the track remains under investigation, the police said. Police said they received a report of an incident at 6:41am involving local train No. 2133 that was heading from Keelung to Chiayi City. Investigators
The Keelung District Prosecutors’ Office today requested that a court detain three individuals, including Keelung Department of Civil Affairs Director Chang Yuan-hsiang (張淵翔), in connection with an investigation into forged signatures used in recall campaigns. Chang is suspected of accessing a household registration system to assist with recall campaigns targeting Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) city councilors Cheng Wen-ting (鄭文婷) and Jiho Chang (張之豪), prosecutors said. Prosecutors yesterday directed investigators to search six locations, including the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) Keelung office and the residences of several recall campaign leaders. The recall campaign leaders, including Chi Wen-chuan (紀文荃), Yu Cheng-i (游正義) and Hsu Shao-yeh
COVID-19 infections have climbed for three consecutive weeks and are likely to reach another peak between next month and June, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday. Weekly hospital visits for the disease increased by 19 percent from the previous week, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Director Guo Hung-wei (郭宏偉) said. From Tuesday last week to yesterday, 21 cases of severe COVID-19 and seven deaths were confirmed, and from Sept. 1 last year to yesterday, there were 600 cases and 129 deaths, he said. From Oct. 1 last year to yesterday, 95.9 percent of the severe cases and 96.7 percent of the deaths