To mark the 60th anniversary of the signing of the San Francisco Peace Treaty, the Taiwan National Alliance (TNA) will stage a parade in Taipei this afternoon, in the hope of letting the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government and the international community know that “Taiwan does not belong to China.”
Japan signed the San Francisco Peace Treaty with 48 UN member countries represented in a meeting in San Francisco on Sept. 8, 1951. In the treaty, Japan declared that it would give up its claims to Taiwan, Penghu and all its other offshore islands.
The treaty has weight in international law, and it does not say to which party Japan ceded Taiwan and the Pescadores, TNA spokesperson Yao Chia-wen (姚嘉文) said, meaning Taiwan is not part of China and Taiwanese have the right to establish their own country.
While the KMT maintains that the 1943 Cairo Communique said that “all territories Japan had won from China, such as Manchuria [Dongbei], Formosa [Taiwan] and the Pescadores [Penghu], shall be restored to the Republic of China,” pro-localization groups in Taiwan say that the communique was not binding under international law because it was only a wartime news communique.
Yao said that he hoped the parade today would be able to tell people, at home and abroad, that the sovereignty of Taiwan belonged to Taiwanese.
The parade will gather in front of the Wanhua Train Station in Taipei at 1:30pm, and start out at 2:28pm, Yao said. The destination of the march is Ketagalan Boulevard in front of the Presidential Office.
Source: Taipei Times - 2011/09/04
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