More groups are preparing to rally against an economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA), vowing to hold a month-long nationwide protest against the proposal, the organizations said yesterday.
Former presidential advisor Koo Kwang-ming (辜寬敏) and representatives of the groups, which include university professor and non-profit organizations, raised concerns yesterday that an ECFA would negatively impact Taiwan’s job market and fragile industries.
A number of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers offered support, joining in cries of “declare war” until President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) reconsiders his plan to sign the pact.
PHOTO: WANG MIN-WEI, TAIPEI TIMES
Taiwan Rescue Action Alliance chief Lin Yi-cheng (林宜正), one of the Taipei event’s organizers, told a press conference yesterday that the Ma government should hold a referendum before signing an ECFA with China in June.
“If there is no ECFA referendum, the people are bound to end up on the streets,” he said.
The protest is expected to attract the backing of a number of labor organizations, the organizers said, adding that the campaign would involve protests, conferences and lectures.
A statement later released by the groups called the timing of the campaign “a historic juncture,” and added that the referendum was necessary because of concerns over China’s political ambitions toward Taiwan.
“We want to show the world that Taiwanese stand together in our opposition to the ECFA and our protection for Taiwan,” the statement read.
Koo said that despite Sunday’s ECFA debate between Ma and DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), the government has not eased concerns that the agreement could unfairly benefit large corporations.
Campaign organizers said a lecture on the ECFA would take place tomorrow night at Taichung City’s Guang Fu Elementary School. Another conference on the ECFA will take place on Sunday in Kaohsiung City and lectures have also been scheduled for May 7 and May 8 in Taichung County.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
RSS