The annual Autumn Struggle labor protest march was held in Taipei yesterday, with the theme this year being “peace, anti war and livelihoods first.”
The Autumn Struggle march dates back to 1993 and has since become a platform for working-class Taiwanese and other groups to get together annually and speak out, a tradition of the Taiwanese autonomous labor movement.
More than 20 civic groups took part in the march yesterday, including Radio Corp of America, Self-Help Association, Taiwan Association for Victims of Occupational Injuries, Anti-war Action Network, Collective of Sex Workers and Supporters, Taiwan Land Justice Action Union, Association for Taiwan Social Studies and Taiwan International Workers Association.
Photo: CNA
More than 200 people participated in the march, and they called on the public to stand up against potential cross-strait wars, while also pressing for social reforms from the government.
March coordinator Huang Te-pei (黃德北) said he hopes that Taiwan would not become “another Ukraine.”
While wars in the Middle East and Ukraine are ongoing, a cross-strait conflict has been looming, he said.
Huang asked the public to stand against wars, request peace and initiate social reforms to combat problems in society.
He also urged the government to resolve livelihood-related problems such as high commodity prices, high housing prices and longer work hours.
Work conditions continue to worsen, but work hours have not been reduced, Huang said, adding that people cannot tolerate such a living environment of low wages and high inflation.
The government should also defend environmental and land justice, disallow political interference with judicial independence, promote comprehensive legislative reform and implement the democratic value of popular sovereignty, he said.
Additional reporting by CNA
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS