China needs to make serious efforts to deliver on the failed pledge it made to the international community in 2001 to win the Olympic bid, a group of human rights activists said at a torch relay in Taipei yesterday.
The torch transfer drew a massive crowd, including athletes, human right activists and political figures.
“We hope [this relay will] attract the world’s attention to China’s oppression of its people. The Olympics is a peaceful event, which directly contradicts what China is doing to human rights activists, Falun Gong members and Tibet,” Taiwan Falun Gong Association chairman Chang Ching-hsi (張清溪) said.
The human-rights torch was first lit on Aug. 9 in Athens, Greece, by the Coalition to Investigate the Prosecution of Falun Gong in China and has since traveled to 34 countries, collecting 589,624 supportive signatures, with an eventual goal of reaching Hong Kong just before the Games, Chang said.
“In order to host the Olympics, China promised the world to cease its notorious oppression against its people in 2001. Here we are in 2008, and instead of improvements, we find only worse neglect of human dignity and rights,” Chang said.
Human rights lawyer Tung Wen-hsun (董文薰) said Taiwanese should be especially concerned with this deterioration, compared with the rest of the world, because there are 1,400 Chinese missiles aimed at them.
Drawing statistics from her book The Dawn Chorus — A Sound That Wakes the World, Tung said a direct correlation existed between human rights conditions and military safety in Taiwan.
“From 2000 to 2008, the number of Chinese missiles aimed our way has increased from 200 to 1,400 — and the same rate of increase had been observed in their number of human organ harvests, mass acts of environmental destruction and wrongful tortures inflicted upon Falun Gong members,” she said. “The more extreme the measures China’s leaders employ on their own people, the more severe the attack you can expect them to deploy to take down Taiwan should a war break out.”
Athletes going to China for the Games can play a part in the pursuit for human rights improvements in China by acting as “peace ambassadors” to the Chinese people, human-rights torch representative Peng Wei-yau (彭偉堯) said.
“By going to the games, athletes can make known to Chinese people the type of oppression they are under, and the value of freedom,” he said.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫), spokeswoman Yang Chih-yu (楊智伃) and Legislator Hsieh Lung-chieh (謝龍介) would be summoned by police for questioning for leading an illegal assembly on Thursday evening last week, Minister of the Interior Liu Shyh-fang (劉世芳) said today. The three KMT officials led an assembly outside the Taipei City Prosecutors’ Office, a restricted area where public assembly is not allowed, protesting the questioning of several KMT staff and searches of KMT headquarters and offices in a recall petition forgery case. Chu, Yang and Hsieh are all suspected of contravening the Assembly and Parade Act (集會遊行法) by holding
PRAISE: Japanese visitor Takashi Kubota said the Taiwanese temple architecture images showcased in the AI Art Gallery were the most impressive displays he saw Taiwan does not have an official pavilion at the World Expo in Osaka, Japan, because of its diplomatic predicament, but the government-backed Tech World pavilion is drawing interest with its unique recreations of works by Taiwanese artists. The pavilion features an artificial intelligence (AI)-based art gallery showcasing works of famous Taiwanese artists from the Japanese colonial period using innovative technologies. Among its main simulated displays are Eastern gouache paintings by Chen Chin (陳進), Lin Yu-shan (林玉山) and Kuo Hsueh-hu (郭雪湖), who were the three young Taiwanese painters selected for the East Asian Painting exhibition in 1927. Gouache is a water-based
Taiwan would welcome the return of Honduras as a diplomatic ally if its next president decides to make such a move, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said yesterday. “Of course, we would welcome Honduras if they want to restore diplomatic ties with Taiwan after their elections,” Lin said at a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, when asked to comment on statements made by two of the three Honduran presidential candidates during the presidential campaign in the Central American country. Taiwan is paying close attention to the region as a whole in the wake of a
OFF-TARGET: More than 30,000 participants were expected to take part in the Games next month, but only 6,550 foreign and 19,400 Taiwanese athletes have registered Taipei city councilors yesterday blasted the organizers of next month’s World Masters Games over sudden timetable and venue changes, which they said have caused thousands of participants to back out of the international sporting event, among other organizational issues. They also cited visa delays and political interference by China as reasons many foreign athletes are requesting refunds for the event, to be held from May 17 to 30. Jointly organized by the Taipei and New Taipei City governments, the games have been rocked by numerous controversies since preparations began in 2020. Taipei City Councilor Lin Yen-feng (林延鳳) said yesterday that new measures by
RSS