News

HK protests may have cost Beijing Taiwan: academic

Saturday, 08 November 2014 06:25 Taipei Times

Pro-democracy protesters chat at a protest site in the Mongkok district of Hong Kong yesterday. More than a month after tens of thousands of Hong Kongers took to the streets demanding free leadership elections for the semi-autonomous Chinese city, weary demonstrators remain encamped across several major roads.
Photo: AFP

China may have “lost” Taiwan as a result of its ham-fisted handling of the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, a Washington conference was told this week.

“There is no sense on the island now, if there ever was one, to buy into this ‘one country, two systems’ formula,” George Washington University professor David Shambaugh said.

Name-change activists being harassed: groups

Friday, 07 November 2014 07:27 Taipei Times

Aboriginal and civic groups yesterday protest in front of the National Police Agency against what they say has been police harassment of Aborigines who participated in spraying graffiti on the facade of the Guangfu Township Office in Hualien County last month.
Photo courtesy of the Association for Taiwan Indigenous Peoples’ Policy

Aboriginal and civic groups yesterday accused the government of conducting a “political witch hunt” with its pursuit of activists who spray-painted the Guangfu Township (光復) Office building in Hualien County to demand the restoration of Aboriginal names to tribal areas.

Early on Oct. 19, the Fa-Ta Alliance for Attack and Defense (馬太攻守聯盟), an Aboriginal group with members from the local Fataan and Tafalong communities in Hualien, painted graffiti on the facade of the office reading: “The land is the eternal nation” and “Whose restoration [(光復, guangfu)]? Names [of places] should be left to the master of the land,” along with the Aboriginal names of the two tribes.