Despite former Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) encouraging his supporters to skip a rally held on Saturday to protest his recall, Jo Lee (李), 67, still flew to Taipei from Kinmen County to attend the event held in front of the Presidential Office.
As the rally began, Lee, a self-declared “Han-fan,” jostled to the front of the growing crowd. In one hand, she held a large umbrella, from which hung t-shirts displaying calls for “justice,” and in the other, a Republic of China flag.
“I wanted to listen to what Han said but…,” Lee said, pausing for several seconds. “We are really in pain.”
Photo: James Chater
Lee said that she was unable to sleep on June 6, the night that Han was successfully recalled; learning of the death of Kaohsiung City Council speaker Hsu Kun-yuan (許崑源), who was one of the mayor’s strongest supporters, only compounded her distress.
Like Lee, few of the estimated 500 people that attended Saturday’s rally were actually from Kaohsiung, and their frustrations were not solely directed at Han’s recall, a testament to the extent the event had diverged from its original purpose. Instead, they were using the protest to express their concerns over the state of Taiwanese politics.
The primary target was President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and her Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration. Those at the rally, mostly in their fifties and sixties, accused Tsai of electoral fraud and faking her PhD diploma, grounds attendees believed for the President to also be recalled.
Photo: James Chater
In this regard, much that was voiced simply re-hashed tropes critical of the DPP from the presidential campaign that ended on Jan. 11 with Tsai’s victory over Han. However, attendees, most of whom are in favor of unification, predictably expressed an acute dissatisfaction with the direction of the nation’s politics.
Sensitive to being too closely associated with China, and having run a recall campaign that criticized the vote as an unnecessary extension of the presidential election, Han’s reluctance to attend was unsurprising.
‘GONE OFF COURSE’
Lin Kuei-Hsiang (林桂香), 65, originally from Tainan, had just returned home from Hawaii for the Lunar New Year, when the coronavirus struck. Unable to leave since then, Lin said she slowly realized that Taiwan had “gone off course,” citing Han’s recall as evidence.
“Tsai can’t just use the power of the state to bring someone down if they don’t like them,” she said.
Lin said the recall was evidence that Taiwan’s democracy had been “distorted” — though the right to recall is enshrined in the constitution and it was launched not by Tsai, but by leaders of the WeCare Kaohsiung organization.
A sense of Taiwan’s “loss” or “deviation” permeated discussions with attendees. However, it most often arose when conversations touched on unification.
UNIFICATION
In this regard, the arrival of Chang An-le (張安樂), Chairman of the China Unification Promotion Party (中華統一促進黨) and a steadfast supporter of unification, provided a revealing litmus test.
Chang is a highly controversial figure. He has extensive historical connections with underground criminal organizations. After a warrant was issued for his arrest in 1996, he fled to China, but was arrested on his return in 2013, only to be released on bail.
Bobby Luo, 43, was chatting enthusiastically amongst friends when he noticed Chang’s entourage moving toward the platform. Unsure who it was at first, Luo walked across to check that it was indeed him. Returning to the group, Luo had a sudden expression of unease.
“He’s going to influence people’s perception of this event,” he said nervously.
However, Taipei resident Chung Chin (鐘琴) 66, described the appearance of Chang as “healthy” for Taiwanese society, which she says has become too sensitive to positions supportive of unification.
“There needs to be a public debate,” Chung said.
Chung criticized the education system, which she said downplays the nation’s historical links to China. With Han’s recall, she is also concerned about the growing taboo around positions supportive of unification.
And despite the conviction of the protesters, it was hard not to equate the sense of “loss” frequently mentioned with the loss of these ideas from the political mainstream.
Han’s refusal to attend, along with other heavyweight members of the KMT, pointed to the increasingly fringe position of views held by those at the rally. Young people were almost entirely absent, a stark contrast to the rally in support of Hong Kong, which was occurring simultaneously at Liberty Square a few hundred meters away.
Although the rally was small in scale, Lee from Kinmen remained optimistic that it would exert at least some kind of influence.
“The people here are like a small stone, when it is dropped into water, it creates a ripple,” she said.
When 17-year-old Lin Shih (林石) crossed the Taiwan Strait in 1746 with a group of settlers, he could hardly have known the magnitude of wealth and influence his family would later amass on the island, or that one day tourists would be walking through the home of his descendants in central Taiwan. He might also have been surprised to see the family home located in Wufeng District (霧峰) of Taichung, as Lin initially settled further north in what is now Dali District (大里). However, after the Qing executed him for his alleged participation in the Lin Shuang-Wen Rebellion (林爽文事件), his grandsons were
A jumbo operation is moving 20 elephants across the breadth of India to the mammoth private zoo set up by the son of Asia’s richest man, adjoining a sprawling oil refinery. The elephants have been “freed from the exploitative logging industry,” according to the Vantara Animal Rescue Centre, run by Anant Ambani, son of the billionaire head of Reliance Industries Mukesh Ambani, a close ally of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The sheer scale of the self-declared “world’s biggest wild animal rescue center” has raised eyebrows — including more than 50 bears, 160 tigers, 200 lions, 250 leopards and 900 crocodiles, according to
They were four years old, 15 or only seven months when they were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau, Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald and Ravensbruck. Some were born there. Somehow they survived, began their lives again and had children, grandchildren and even great grandchildren themselves. Now in the evening of their lives, some 40 survivors of the Nazi camps tell their story as the world marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the most notorious of the death camps. In 15 countries, from Israel to Poland, Russia to Argentina, Canada to South Africa, they spoke of victory over absolute evil. Some spoke publicly for the first
I am kneeling quite awkwardly on a cushion in a yoga studio in London’s Shoreditch on an unseasonably chilly Wednesday and wondering when exactly will be the optimum time to rearrange my legs. I have an ice-cold mango and passion fruit kombucha beside me and an agonising case of pins and needles. The solution to pins and needles, I learned a few years ago, is to directly confront the agony: pull your legs out from underneath you, bend your toes up as high as they can reach, and yes, it will hurt far more initially, but then the pain subsides.
RSS