Taiwanese enjoy democracy and freedom and have multiple ways to express their creativity, and hopefully young people in China would also one day have the freedom to sing and express themselves, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said yesterday, commemorating the Tiananmen Square Massacre.
Yesterday was the 34th anniversary of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s bloody crackdown on student-led protests in Beijing in 1989, also known as the June Fourth Incident.
Tsai posted a photograph taken in March in a subway station in Guizhou, China, where hundreds of young people gathered to sing People With No Ideals Don’t Get Hurt (沒有理想的人不傷心), saying that they had sung the verse: “I don’t want to always live underground.”
Photo: Sam Yeh, AFP
Expressing emotions or criticizing society through song is common for young people, including in Taiwan, she wrote on social media.
For many, the right to freely create is as natural as air and water, as people have democracy, freedom and multiple channels to express their diverse creativity in Taiwan, Tsai wrote.
“We hope one day, young people in China can sing freely and have passion when they create and express themselves, without worry,” she wrote.
Vice President and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairman William Lai (賴清德) wrote on Facebook that “people should not forget the June Fourth Incident, and should cherish hard-won freedom and democracy.”
Taiwan had just lifted martial law and there were many democratic movements when the Tiananmen Square Massacre occurred, so Taiwanese understood why Chinese wanted democracy, he wrote.
The incident has not been and should not be forgotten, and people should continue to discuss and commemorate it to remind themselves that freedom and democracy do not come easily, Lai wrote.
As China tightens its control over Hong Kong, events commemorating the incident have been suspended, books about it have been removed from libraries and the liberal, pro-democracy Civic Party was dissolved last month, he wrote.
Lai said that the play 35th of May (五月三 十 五日) — code used by Chinese for “June 4” as it is censored — was banned in China and Hong Kong, but would be performed in Taipei, showing the difference between democracy in Taiwan and China’s autocracy.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) wrote on Facebook that the students who pursued freedom in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square not only shouted their wish for reform, but showed the world their hope for democracy.
He said that the best way to pay tribute to them is by continuing to be a democratic lighthouse for ethnic Chinese, preserving the lifestyles in Taiwan, and protecting the freedom, democracy, human rights, rule of law and prosperity of the Republic of China (ROC).
“Facing the historical pain, we must realize that freedom and human rights are the progressive values that both sides of the [Taiwan] Strait should pursue, and supporting June Fourth is a practical display of the ROC pursuing freedom and democracy,” New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜), the KMT’s presidential candidate, said in a statement.
Separately, National Taiwan University (NTU) graduate student Lau Ka-yee (劉家儀) and a friend protested in commemoration of the Tiananmen Square Massacre at Hong Kong’s Victoria Park on Saturday evening, and were arrested for allegedly acting with seditious intention.
The NTU Graduate Student Association held a news conference condemning the Hong Kong police, saying that it would monitor Lau’s situation.
It urged NTU’s president to speak up for Lau and provide assistance.
Additional reporting by Yang Mien-chieh
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest foundry service provider, yesterday said that global semiconductor revenue is projected to hit US$1.5 trillion in 2030, after the figure exceeds US$1 trillion this year, as artificial intelligence (AI) demand boosts consumption of token and compute power. “We are still at the beginning of the AI revolution, but we already see a significant impact across the whole semiconductor ecosystem,” TSMC deputy cochief operating officer Kevin Zhang (張曉強) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “It is fair to say that in the past decade, smartphones and other mobile devices were
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS