As the impasse in the legislature over various versions of an amendment to the Assembly and Parade Act (集會遊行法) continues, rhetoric is heating up and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is resorting to alarmism. Although its opposition to the Cabinet’s draft — the version most likely to pass — is most justified, DPP statements to the effect that the government will soon reinstate martial law are foolish. If anything, they risk detracting from legitimate concerns about the Executive Yuan’s proposal.
The amendment, originally to be put to a vote last week, remains embroiled in controversy that has led to a deadlock. The proposals were again put on the agenda for yesterday’s plenary session but no progress was made.
“The proposed [amendment] is a prelude to martial law,” DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said on Friday. Other DPP lawmakers, including Wong Chin-chu (翁金珠) and caucus whip Lee Chun-yee (李俊毅), have offered similar assessments, saying the amendment harkened back to the Martial Law era.
The opposition’s frustration is genuine and its vigilance toward an objectionable proposal welcome, but the question is whether this rhetoric helps the DPP’s case or makes it easier to dismiss. The Cabinet’s amendment is most disturbing not because there is any indication that the government is plotting a return to martial law, but because it fails to resolve undemocratic aspects already embedded in the assembly act, despite claiming to do just that.
There is plenty of room for abuse in the act as it stands, which civic groups have long attacked as a remnant of the nation’s authoritarian past — and the Cabinet’s amendment is no remedy. Human rights campaigners have roundly rejected the proposal as a show: Rather than removing restrictions on demonstrations, it would merely tweak the controls to give a semblance of improvement. At the same time, the threat of a fine of up to NT$50,000 would be added for rally organizers who fail to report details of a demonstration to police in advance.
The Cabinet’s proposal also leaves key questions unanswered. Police would be able to nix a demonstration if they feared a negative impact on “national security, social order or public interests,” it says, yet fails to offer an adequate clarification of these terms. Potentially, their ambiguity would allow police, or the government, to wield the clause against peaceful protests they find unpalatable.
Just six months after the nation witnessed police seizing Republic of China and Tibetan flags from demonstrators during Chinese envoy Chen Yunlin’s (陳雲林) visit, the concern sparked by this provision is understandable. Amnesty International Taiwan has further raised the question of recourse in cases where rally organizers suspect the clause is being abused, arguing that the amendment fails to guard against this eventuality.
The list of problems with the Cabinet’s amendment is long, yet the DPP does itself the disservice of peppering its criticisms with threats that martial law may soon be upon us. It should be sufficient to note that the Cabinet’s proposal is a sham, and that the DPP, civic groups and the public have every reason to be angered by this charade.
Jan. 1 marks a decade since China repealed its one-child policy. Just 10 days before, Peng Peiyun (彭珮雲), who long oversaw the often-brutal enforcement of China’s family-planning rules, died at the age of 96, having never been held accountable for her actions. Obituaries praised Peng for being “reform-minded,” even though, in practice, she only perpetuated an utterly inhumane policy, whose consequences have barely begun to materialize. It was Vice Premier Chen Muhua (陳慕華) who first proposed the one-child policy in 1979, with the endorsement of China’s then-top leaders, Chen Yun (陳雲) and Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平), as a means of avoiding the
The last foreign delegation Nicolas Maduro met before he went to bed Friday night (January 2) was led by China’s top Latin America diplomat. “I had a pleasant meeting with Qiu Xiaoqi (邱小琪), Special Envoy of President Xi Jinping (習近平),” Venezuela’s soon-to-be ex-president tweeted on Telegram, “and we reaffirmed our commitment to the strategic relationship that is progressing and strengthening in various areas for building a multipolar world of development and peace.” Judging by how minutely the Central Intelligence Agency was monitoring Maduro’s every move on Friday, President Trump himself was certainly aware of Maduro’s felicitations to his Chinese guest. Just
A recent piece of international news has drawn surprisingly little attention, yet it deserves far closer scrutiny. German industrial heavyweight Siemens Mobility has reportedly outmaneuvered long-entrenched Chinese competitors in Southeast Asian infrastructure to secure a strategic partnership with Vietnam’s largest private conglomerate, Vingroup. The agreement positions Siemens to participate in the construction of a high-speed rail link between Hanoi and Ha Long Bay. German media were blunt in their assessment: This was not merely a commercial win, but has symbolic significance in “reshaping geopolitical influence.” At first glance, this might look like a routine outcome of corporate bidding. However, placed in
China often describes itself as the natural leader of the global south: a power that respects sovereignty, rejects coercion and offers developing countries an alternative to Western pressure. For years, Venezuela was held up — implicitly and sometimes explicitly — as proof that this model worked. Today, Venezuela is exposing the limits of that claim. Beijing’s response to the latest crisis in Venezuela has been striking not only for its content, but for its tone. Chinese officials have abandoned their usual restrained diplomatic phrasing and adopted language that is unusually direct by Beijing’s standards. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs described the
RSS