How refreshing the past few months have been. At long last, a group of young people — still relatively small in number, but certainly active and extremely canny — has achieved things that well-funded and established political parties, concerned as they are with continuity, can only dream of accomplishing.
This new phenomenon, which sprouted legs sometime in the middle of last year, is the youth movement, which over time has expanded from a single-issue group into a multifaceted and cross-pollinating entity that mobilizes wherever injustice rears its ugly head. From the defeat of Want Want China Times Group chairman Tsai Eng-meng’s (蔡衍明) efforts to create a media goliath through the acquisition of four of Jimmy Lai’s (黎智英) Next Media outlets in Taiwan, to an ongoing campaign against the destruction of the Losheng (Happy Life) Sanatorium and the forced eviction of elderly residents of the Huaguang Community (華光) in Taipei, the several hundreds of highly educated, connected, Internet-savvy young people who form the core of this group are showing Taiwan the way forward.
It would be easy to dismiss their protests as simply for show, of being protests for the sake of publicity, were it not for their acts serving as instruments of education. The social media platforms that have been created in parallel with the protests are often more current and learned than anything one will find in the mass media.
Furthermore, their mobilization, with support from a number of academics, is engendering essential public debate on issues that otherwise would be ignored.
Even more important is that their protests are actions, not the hollow talk usually served by politicians from both sides of the political divide. Those actions are, in turn, prompting reactions. Occasionally, those reactions are overreactions, such as the targeting of young students, like Chen Wei-ting (陳為廷), by both Tsai’s media empire and government authorities, or just this week, the Miaoli County Police Department’s handling of the protests over the wind turbine project in Yuanli Township (苑裡).
Through its actions, the youth movement is bringing out the best and the worst in government officials and ordinary people alike, which inevitably creates a clash in values and interests.
When peaceful protests in Yuanli are broken by police who ride on Thursday last week roughshod over the law, using disproportionate measures such as handcuffing activists, or threatening their immediate arrest if they turned out again, it forces people to scrutinize how our law enforcement agencies, along with the Ministry of the Interior, are abiding by the rules of the nation’s democratic system. Using every electronic tool at their disposal, the young protesters, aided by a pool of stalwart journalists, are making sure that everything is well documented.
When the authorities fail, as they evidently did in Miaoli in the past week, senior officials come under fire, as occurred on Wednesday, when Minister of the Interior Lee Hong-yuan (李鴻源) and other top officials faced heated questions in the legislature, prompting Lee to promise an investigation. It was fascinating to see how the subject focused the minds of the Democratic Progressive Party legislators, who led the charge.
When was the last time that political parties forced the public to look at articles of the law, or to think about such fundamentals as freedom of the press or the right to property?
In the past year, the youth movement has dared to dream and to take a stand in the defense of the values that are supposed to serve as the foundations for this nation. Unlike the politicians who speak in abstract terms and often seem to take those values for granted, this nascent youth movement is willing to fight for them, and to teach us lessons in the process.
The time has come for rejuvenation, and for that to happen, what is required is action — physical involvement, and the catalysis of anger in the face of injustice. Yes, such mobilization causes disturbances and sometimes leads to clashes, but it is now clear that this is what is necessary to shake the majority of Taiwanese out of their comfortable stupor before it is too late.
J. Michael Cole is a deputy news editor at the Taipei Times.
Saudi Arabian largesse is flooding Egypt’s cultural scene, but the reception is mixed. Some welcome new “cooperation” between two regional powerhouses, while others fear a hostile takeover by Riyadh. In Cairo, historically the cultural capital of the Arab world, Egyptian Minister of Culture Nevine al-Kilany recently hosted Saudi Arabian General Entertainment Authority chairman Turki al-Sheikh. The deep-pocketed al-Sheikh has emerged as a Medici-like patron for Egypt’s cultural elite, courted by Cairo’s top talent to produce a slew of forthcoming films. A new three-way agreement between al-Sheikh, Kilany and United Media Services — a multi-media conglomerate linked to state intelligence that owns much of
The US and other countries should take concrete steps to confront the threats from Beijing to avoid war, US Representative Mario Diaz-Balart said in an interview with Voice of America on March 13. The US should use “every diplomatic economic tool at our disposal to treat China as what it is... to avoid war,” Diaz-Balart said. Giving an example of what the US could do, he said that it has to be more aggressive in its military sales to Taiwan. Actions by cross-party US lawmakers in the past few years such as meeting with Taiwanese officials in Washington and Taipei, and
The Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan has no official diplomatic allies in the EU. With the exception of the Vatican, it has no official allies in Europe at all. This does not prevent the ROC — Taiwan — from having close relations with EU member states and other European countries. The exact nature of the relationship does bear revisiting, if only to clarify what is a very complicated and sensitive idea, the details of which leave considerable room for misunderstanding, misrepresentation and disagreement. Only this week, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) received members of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations
Denmark’s “one China” policy more and more resembles Beijing’s “one China” principle. At least, this is how things appear. In recent interactions with the Danish state, such as applying for residency permits, a Taiwanese’s nationality would be listed as “China.” That designation occurs for a Taiwanese student coming to Denmark or a Danish citizen arriving in Denmark with, for example, their Taiwanese partner. Details of this were published on Sunday in an article in the Danish daily Berlingske written by Alexander Sjoberg and Tobias Reinwald. The pretext for this new practice is that Denmark does not recognize Taiwan as a state under