Hundreds of people, including farmers and farming activists from Taiwan, Thailand, Indonesia, South Korea, Japan and Malaysia, yesterday rallied against the globalization of agriculture on Ketagalan Boulevard in front of the Presidential Office, protesting against the government’s plans to lift more bans on agricultral imports.
“We gather here today to express our anger, we want to tell the government that we’re fed up with their compromises on our food sovereignty, it’s a serious problem that our food self-sufficiency has dropped to 33 percent now,” Taiwan Rural Front (TRF) spokeswoman Tsai Pei-hui (蔡培慧) told the crowd at the rally. “You’ve put our dining tables and refrigerators in other people’s homes, we want to keep them in our own places.”
In addition to a series of heated protests against land expropriations that have been going on for years, farmers and farming activists are worried that the government may soon lift the bans on imports of 830 categories of farm products from China, as well as pork products from the US, despite President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) repeated promises that he would not do so.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
“During the presidential campaign, Ma promised numerous times that he would not lift the bans on imports of 830 categories of farm products from China, but now, Council of Agriculture Minister Chen Bao-ji (陳保基) is saying that the bans ‘may’ be lifted,” said National Cheng Chi University land economics professor Hsu Shih-jung (徐世榮), a long-time advocate of farmers’ rights. “When the government decided to lift the ban on imports of certain US beef products amid strong opposition from the public, Ma also firmly promised that the imports of US pork products would remain banned — yet the US government is now pressuring the Ma administration to lift the ban.”
Hsu said farmers across the country now “have little confidence in this incapable government” and therefore gathered to voice their opposition to free trade in the agricultural sector and to call on the government to insist on agricultural sovereignty.
Henry Saragih, the general coordinator of the Jakarta, Indonesia, office of international small farmers’ organization La Via Campesina, said that the problems that Taiwanese farmers encounter are the same for farmers across the world.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
La Via Campesina is an international coalition of peasants’ movements with 148 member groups in 69 countries around the world.
“Land grabbing, loss of food sovereignty and an increasing number of people threatened by famine — now reaching more than 1 billion — are problems created by the WTO, globalization and neo-liberalism,” Saragih said.
He said that Thailand, for instance, which originally had a diverse agricultural sector, now specializes in producing rice for export, and has to import other produce.
South Korea has become an exporter of electronic products, “and since most of its farmland has been taken by the industrial sector, some South Korean agricultural companies now grab land in Africa — especially Madagascar — to grow produce to be imported back to South Korea, leaving Madagascan farmers landless,” Saragih said.
Wirat Phromson, a member of the Northern Peasants’ Federation Thailand, urged farmers in Taiwan to continue their struggle.
Citing the farming rights movement in Thailand, Phromson said that despite the seeming flexibility of the Thai government and its promise to revise laws, “the [Thai] government eventually amended laws concerning the agricultural sector, but not for the interests of the peasants. Rather, it was for the interests of big corporations.”
“We want to tell our brothers and sisters in Taiwan and in Via Campesina: Do not believe those empty promises of the government,” he said. “We can’t let people from outside take valuable resources from us and impose on us the sufferings of hunger.”
Following performances by musicians in the evening, the rally ended with protesters throwing bundles of straw toward the Presidential Office.
In his National Day Rally speech on Sunday, Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財) quoted the Taiwanese song One Small Umbrella (一支小雨傘) to describe his nation’s situation. Wong’s use of such a song shows Singapore’s familiarity with Taiwan’s culture and is a perfect reflection of exchanges between the two nations, Representative to Singapore Tung Chen-yuan (童振源) said yesterday in a post on Facebook. Wong quoted the song, saying: “As the rain gets heavier, I will take care of you, and you,” in Mandarin, using it as a metaphor for Singaporeans coming together to face challenges. Other Singaporean politicians have also used Taiwanese songs
NORTHERN STRIKE: Taiwanese military personnel have been training ‘in strategic and tactical battle operations’ in Michigan, a former US diplomat said More than 500 Taiwanese troops participated in this year’s Northern Strike military exercise held at Lake Michigan by the US, a Pentagon-run news outlet reported yesterday. The Michigan National Guard-sponsored drill involved 7,500 military personnel from 36 nations and territories around the world, the Stars and Stripes said. This year’s edition of Northern Strike, which concluded on Sunday, simulated a war in the Indo-Pacific region in a departure from its traditional European focus, it said. The change indicated a greater shift in the US armed forces’ attention to a potential conflict in Asia, it added. Citing a briefing by a Michigan National Guard senior
CHIPMAKING INVESTMENT: J.W. Kuo told legislators that Department of Investment Review approval would be needed were Washington to seek a TSMC board seat Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) yesterday said he received information about a possible US government investment in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and an assessment of the possible effect on the firm requires further discussion. If the US were to invest in TSMC, the plan would need to be reviewed by the Department of Investment Review, Kuo told reporters ahead of a hearing of the legislature’s Economics Committee. Kuo’s remarks came after US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick on Tuesday said that the US government is looking into the federal government taking equity stakes in computer chip manufacturers that
CLAMPING DOWN: At the preliminary stage on Jan. 1 next year, only core personnel of the military, the civil service and public schools would be subject to inspections Regular checks are to be conducted from next year to clamp down on military personnel, civil servants and public-school teachers with Chinese citizenship or Chinese household registration, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday. Article 9-1 of the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) stipulates that Taiwanese who obtain Chinese household registration or a Chinese passport would be deprived of their Taiwanese citizenship and lose their right to work in the military, public service or public schools, it said. To identify and prevent the illegal employment of holders of Chinese ID cards or
RSS