Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

TAO visit shows fragility of democracy: symposium

Taipei Times

National Tsing Hua University student Dennis Wei speaks at a Taiwan Association of University Professors symposium in Taipei yesterday.
Photo: Chien Jung-fong, Taipei Times

The recently concluded visit of China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) Minister Zhang Zhijun (張志軍) exposed the danger of the President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) administration’s attempt to merge “two distinctively different civilizations and the fragility of Taiwan’s democracy and civic society,” panelists at a symposium said yesterday.

“Never think that the tragedy of the 228 Incident cannot happen in the 21st century,” retired National Taiwan University professor Kenneth Lin (林向愷) told the symposium, organized by the Taiwan Association of University Professors.

Protesters, police scuffle outside Legislative Yuan

Taipei Times

Protesters scuffle with police outside the Legislative Yuan in Taipei yesterday as lawmakers were scheduled to review the draft bill on the free economic pilot zones.
Photo: CNA

Dozens of activists vaulted the front gate of the Legislative Yuan in Taipei yesterday morning in protest over the controversial free economic pilot zones draft bill being put on yesterday’s legislative agenda, but were dispersed by police, who handcuffed and arrested some of the demonstrators about an hour after they jumped the fence.

A group of about 30 people, representing at least five activist groups, including the Restoration of Taiwan Social Justice, the Wing of Radical Politics, the Alliance of Referendum for Taiwan and Democracy Kuroshio, climbed over the front gate before a plenary session that was scheduled to begin at 9am to protest against the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) placing the free economic pilot zones bill on the agenda and its alleged intention to ram it through.

June 25: A dark day for Taiwan

Taipei Times Editorial

June 25 this year was a historic day for Taiwan. Not because China’s Taiwan Affairs Office Minister Zhang Zhijun (張志軍) was in Taiwan to meet with his counterpart, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Wang Yu-chi (王郁琦), beginning what they called an “important step” toward building government-to-government contact and normalizing communication channels to deal with cross-strait issues, but because it marked yet another dark day in Taiwan’s history of democracy, in which human rights — a key asset of Taiwan — were trampled on.

Ma growing nation into a ‘cabbage republic’

James Wang 王景弘

The “Treasured Masterpieces from the National Palace Museum, Taipei” exhibition in Japan became the subject of heated controversy after the word “national” was omitted from the National Palace Museum’s name on promotional posters — an incident that serves to highlight the strange attitudes espoused by President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration.

If the Jadeite Cabbage with Insects (翠玉白菜) is so valuable that people are just dying to see it, then the Ma administration should raise the stakes and require that any institution or organization that wants to borrow it must first recognize Taiwan as a sovereign, independent nation, instead of merely squabbling over the use — or lack thereof — of the word “national.”

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