March 24, 2014, is guaranteed to go down as one of the days permanently etched into the history of Taiwan’s democratic movement. It was a very sad, but also a great day for the nation.
In a crackdown on thousands of students and citizens who occupied the Executive Yuan compound, riot police evicted the protesters with water cannons and excessive force, injuring dozens.
On Sunday night, about 100 protesters broke off from the thousands of students who have been staging sit-ins around the legislative compound and “ambushed” the Executive Yuan. At the same time, dozens of other university students successfully occupied the Control Yuan.
In what is now known as the Sunflower Revolution, students were able to seize three of the five government branches at one point, before yielding control over the Executive Yuan and Control Yuan the next day.
The siege on government buildings did not go unquestioned, in particular the occupation of the Executive Yuan, which some people described as the wrong strategy saying the students had “gone too far.”
The students said they were not “rioters” and that they resorted to the “extreme” measure of occupying government buildings only because they had exhausted every other possible way to voice their concerns over the cross-strait service trade agreement.
They said they had received no response from the government, which had advertised the pact as one Taiwan could not do without, saying it could bypass a committee review and be sent to the legislature’s plenary session for a second reading.
Behind the students’ extreme measure is widespread public desperation that has been accumulating for more than two years, during which protests over a wide range of social issues — nuclear power, media monopolization and the government’s illegal land expropriation and development projects — have either been ignored or played down by the Ma administration.
The students resorted to civil disobedience in order to have their voices heard, well aware that they might be breaking the law, yet nevertheless prepared to suffer the consequences of their actions.
Premier Jiang Yi-huah’s (江宜樺) meeting with the students on Saturday and Ma’s international press conference on Sunday extinguished the last hope for the students. Instead of showing an intention to negotiate, or offering a concession, Ma and Jiang decided to take their own extreme measure, sending in hundreds of police in riot gear and using water cannons to disperse the crowds, causing dozens of injuries.
It was sad to see the government resort to such violent measures. These are the most extreme reactions seen since 520 farmers protested in 1988 or the crackdown on protesters when Chinese official Chen Yunlin (陳雲林) visited Taiwan in 2008.
In the aftermath of the crackdown, some have even compared the violent crackdown to the 228 Massacre in 1947 and the Kaohsiung Incident in 1979, saying the violence yesterday would be etched into the minds of Taiwanese in a similar manner.
However, the day is also a great day for Taiwan, as it will be remembered that the young generation are willing to stand up for what they believe in and care about the country’s future, even if bloodshed is the price to pay.
It is great to know that the future of Taiwan will be in good hands.
The Executive Yuan recently revised a page of its Web site on ethnic groups in Taiwan, replacing the term “Han” (漢族) with “the rest of the population.” The page, which was updated on March 24, describes the composition of Taiwan’s registered households as indigenous (2.5 percent), foreign origin (1.2 percent) and the rest of the population (96.2 percent). The change was picked up by a social media user and amplified by local media, sparking heated discussion over the weekend. The pan-blue and pro-China camp called it a politically motivated desinicization attempt to obscure the Han Chinese ethnicity of most Taiwanese.
On Wednesday last week, the Rossiyskaya Gazeta published an article by Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) asserting the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) territorial claim over Taiwan effective 1945, predicated upon instruments such as the 1943 Cairo Declaration and the 1945 Potsdam Proclamation. The article further contended that this de jure and de facto status was subsequently reaffirmed by UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 of 1971. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs promptly issued a statement categorically repudiating these assertions. In addition to the reasons put forward by the ministry, I believe that China’s assertions are open to questions in international
The Legislative Yuan passed an amendment on Friday last week to add four national holidays and make Workers’ Day a national holiday for all sectors — a move referred to as “four plus one.” The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), who used their combined legislative majority to push the bill through its third reading, claim the holidays were chosen based on their inherent significance and social relevance. However, in passing the amendment, they have stuck to the traditional mindset of taking a holiday just for the sake of it, failing to make good use of
As strategic tensions escalate across the vast Indo-Pacific region, Taiwan has emerged as more than a potential flashpoint. It is the fulcrum upon which the credibility of the evolving American-led strategy of integrated deterrence now rests. How the US and regional powers like Japan respond to Taiwan’s defense, and how credible the deterrent against Chinese aggression proves to be, will profoundly shape the Indo-Pacific security architecture for years to come. A successful defense of Taiwan through strengthened deterrence in the Indo-Pacific would enhance the credibility of the US-led alliance system and underpin America’s global preeminence, while a failure of integrated deterrence would
RSS