wfn.org | A Million Taiwanese Will Join Hands to Surround Their Homeland

[Taiwan Church News <pctpress@ms1.hinet.net>]

Taiwan Church News 2712, 16 through 22 February 2004
Reported by Li Hsin-ren.  Translated and Rewritten by David Alexander

A coalition of religious, welfare and political groups has formed to 
promote a "million people human chain" to surround the island on 
February 28th.	The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in 
Taiwan has pledged 5,000 of those people to fill up 3.5 kilometers of 
the chain in semi rural Miao-li County in North-central Taiwan.  Beyond 
these, several groups from local churches and church related schools 
have pledged to fill portions of the chain nearer to home.
   February 28th, marked as peace and reconciliation day in Taiwan, 
commemorates a series of atrocities committed upon the Taiwanese people 
by the military and police forces of the Nationalist Chinese government 
that came to rule the island after the second world war.  For years that 
government suppressed mention of the affair. With the end of martial law 
in the late 1980's the historical files were opened, and annual memorial 
events have gone some distance in healing the wounds.
   The event this year comes barely three weeks before a hotly contested 
presidential election accompanied by a national referendum on Taiwan's 
status viz China.  Those joining the chain are seen as making a 
statement about their feelings regarding both issues on which a formal 
vote will be taken on March 20th.  
   The General Assembly is running its own registration service for 
participants, as well as lining up busses to ferry people from all over 
Northern and Central Taiwan to the assigned location.  Youth Secretary 
Lim Hontiong said that the activity is an enacted prayer for Taiwan on a 
day of deep historical significance.  He expressed hope that many would 
take part, and asked all to pray for safe and convenient 
transportation.  Since the number of busses available for charter that 
day is limited, he asked that those who could travel to the site by 
train or public bus seek to use those conveyances.  
   The organizers hope that for at least a moment, 2:28PM on February 
28th, hands can be joined in support of peace and in defiance of the 
nearly 500 ballistic missiles that are said to be poised in China ready 
for use against this nation.  The call of Taiwan is to "Press for 
Democracy, Oppose Forceful Assimilation."

For more information: www.pct.org.tw
		      Lim Hontiong  hontiong@mail.pct.org.tw
Taiwan Church News is published weekly in Taiwan's local languages.