Pro-localization advocates at a rally in Taipei yesterday called for Taiwan’s sovereignty and independence to be recognized, and decried celebrations of Retrocession Day.
Political party leaders and members of the Taiwanese Self-Determination and Nation-Building Alliance said that Oct. 25 marks the day “Taiwan was reoccupied by enemy forces” and urged people not to fall in line with past Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) regimes by calling it Retrocession Day.
Alliance spokesman Sim Kian-tek (沈建德) said that after World War II, Allied leaders were opposed to colonial powers returning in Asia.
Photo: Lo Pei-de, Taipei Times
The Allied nations promised Asian countries that had been occupied during the war, including Taiwan, that they would have self-determination and voting rights, but the KMT regime in China took over Taiwan by military force, Sim said.
“The past KMT government used its propaganda machine to rewrite history and deceived Taiwanese by marking Oct. 25 each year and calling it Retrocession Day,” he said. “That was based on a surrender ceremony on Oct. 25, 1945, at what is now Zhongshan Hall in Taipei.”
“The KMT government of the time said that representatives of the Japanese government surrendered to it, but in reality, Japan had submitted to the Allied military commanders in Asia,” Sim said.
“So the KMT’s Retrocession Day is a big lie, as Taiwan’s sovereignty was not handed over to it at end of WWII,” he said, adding that the US opposed the return of colonial rulers in Asia, whether it be Japan, China, the UK or France.
Taiwan Solidarity Party Chairwoman Chou Ni-an (周倪安) said that Taiwanese “must stop celebrating the so-called retrocession and instead unite to resist the foreign Chinese regimes of the KMT and communist China by demanding self-determination and the construction of a new Taiwan nation.”
Taiwan Statebuilding Party Chairman Wang Hsing-huan (王興煥) called on “all Taiwanese and the ruling party to act now to complete the unfinished road to self-determination through a public referendum.”
“That would establish de jure independence for Taiwan,” Wang said.
“Then we can discard the shackles of the old KMT regime, and have our own national flag and national anthem,” he said.
“We would then have a place as a new nation on the world stage,” he added.
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