People, holding placards of a bleeding eye, take part in a demonstration in front of the Presidential Office in Taipei yesterday.
TAIPEI: Tens of thousands of Taiwanese took to the streets yesterday in protest over the death of a young conscript who died from alleged abuse.
Singing a Taiwanese take on the revolutionary song “Do you hear the people sing?” from the hit musical Les Miserables, protesters rallied at a square near the presidential office in Taipei, mostly dressed in white — a colour symbolising truth in local culture.
This was the second mass protest since corporal Hung Chung-chiu died of heatstroke on July 4 — apparently after being forced to exercise excessively as punishment for taking a smartphone onto his base — just three days before the end of his compulsory year-long military service.
About 30,000 people demonstrated outside the defence ministry in the capital on July 20, according to Citizen 1985, an activist group that organised the protests.
“We estimate a bigger turnout today on the eve of Hung’s funeral than the previous protest. We hope the government will hear the people’s anger at its handling of the case,” Liu Lin-wei, a spokesman for the group, said. Police estimates of the crowd size were not immediately available.
President Ma Ying-jeou, whose approval ratings have plummeted in recent months, has apologised for the incident and vowed to seek justice for the victim and punish those responsible. AFP
