Student activists occupying the legislative chamber yesterday announced that they would expand their protest, as President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) had failed to answer their demands about the contentious cross-strait service trade agreement.
“As both Ma and Wang did not respond positively [to our demands], we have decided to expand our action by calling on the public to surround the Chinese Nationalist Party’s [KMT] local headquarters wherever they are,” Lin Fei-fan (林飛帆), a graduate student of political science at National Taiwan University and one of the leaders of the protest, said at press conference in the legislative chamber.
“Meanwhile, the occupation and siege of the Legislative Yuan will not end. We will continue on and call on more people to join us until we receive positive responses from Ma and Wang,” he said.
Photo: Chang Chia-ming, Taipei Times
Lin said the KMT caucus’ questionable passing of the trade pact at a joint committee meeting and forwarding it to the plenary session have created a constitutional crisis, “and now the government under Ma’s leadership has lost its legitimacy to govern, as it has not only refused to respond to questions from the public, but also threatened us with riot police and water cannons.”
Lin was referring to the increase in police reinforcement as well as the arrival of water cannons near the legislature last night. Police also surrounded the Executive Yuan with barbed wire and blocked several roads leading to the Presidential Office Building.
“We will continue to occupy the legislature. We will not retreat,” Lin shouted.
Despite the presence of 200 to 300 students in the legislative chamber and thousands of demonstrators outside the legislature, the protest was peaceful throughout the day.
Students activists in the chamber formed small groups to discuss issues about the trade agreement, saying they wanted to show legislators what democracy is.
“This is the time when a general assembly is supposed to take place, but we will be holding our own deliberative democracy meeting on the service trade pact here in place of a regular legislative meeting,” Chiang Ping-lun (江昺崙), a spokesperson for the protest told the crowd before the forum started. “We will show the lawmakers how to discuss such an important issue in a peaceful, rational and democratic way.”
They later wrote their conclusions on small pieces of paper, and posted the papers on the wall on the two sides of the podium to spell out the two English words “freedom” and “democracy” in capital letters.
Chiu Hsien-chih (邱顯智), a lawyer, later showed up to announced that more than 300 lawyers have joined a team of lawyers to provide legal assistance to the protesters.
“We would like to tell the parents of all the student activists that there are doctors and lawyers [supporting the protest] and we will make sure that your children will be able to go home safely,” he said.
He reminded the students that if they arrested, they should use their right to silence and demand to see a lawyer.
Meanwhile, Taipei District Prosecutor Office prosecutor Liu Cheng-wu (劉承武) filed a lawsuit against Ma and National Police Administration Director-General Wang Cho-chiun (王卓鈞), accusing them of manslaughter, harm and aggravated harm against others.
Liu said he had learned that police had been given orders to clear out the students occupying the legislative chamber.
The order would cause bloody conflict between students and police, Liu said, adding that if Ma and Wang Cho-chiun ordered a forceful clearing of the chambers, they would be overreaching their authority and contravening the Constitution.
Additional reporting by Hou Po-ching
CREDIT-GRABBER: China said its coast guard rescued the crew of a fishing vessel that caught fire, who were actually rescued by a nearby Taiwanese boat and the CGA Maritime search and rescue operations do not have borders, and China should not use a shipwreck to infringe upon Taiwanese sovereignty, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said yesterday. The coast guard made the statement in response to the China Coast Guard (CCG) saying it saved a Taiwanese fishing boat. The Chuan Yu No. 6 (全漁6號), a fishing vessel registered in Keelung, on Thursday caught fire and sank in waters northeast of Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台). The vessel left Keelung’s Badouzih Fishing Harbor (八斗子漁港) at 3:35pm on Sunday last week, with seven people on board — a 62-year-old Taiwanese captain surnamed Chang (張) and six
RISKY BUSINESS: The ‘incentives’ include initiatives that get suspended for no reason, creating uncertainty and resulting in considerable losses for Taiwanese, the MAC said China’s “incentives” failed to sway sentiment in Taiwan, as willingness to work in China hit a record low of 1.6 percent, a Ministry of Labor survey showed. The Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) also reported that the number of Taiwanese workers in China has nearly halved from a peak of 430,000 in 2012 to an estimated 231,000 in 2024. That marked a new low in the proportion of Taiwanese going abroad to work. The ministry’s annual survey on “Labor Life and Employment Status” includes questions respondents’ willingness to seek employment overseas. Willingness to work in China has steadily declined from
The Legislative Yuan’s Finance Committee yesterday approved proposed amendments to the Amusement Tax Act (娛樂稅法) that would abolish taxes on films, cultural activities and competitive sporting events, retaining the fee only for dance halls and golf courses. The proposed changes would set the maximum tax rate for dance halls and golf courses at 50 and 20 percent respectively, with local governments authorized to suspend the levies. Article 2 of the act says that “amusement tax shall be levied on tickets sold or fees charged by amusement places, facilities or activities” in six categories: “Cinema; professional singing, story-telling, dancing, circus, magic show, acrobatics
INFLATION UP? The IMF said CPI would increase to 1.5 percent this year, while the DGBAS projected it would rise to 1.68 percent, with GDP per capita of US$44,181 The IMF projected Taiwan’s real GDP would grow 5.2 percent this year, up from its 2.1 percent outlook in January, despite fears of global economic disruptions sparked by the US-Iran conflict. Taiwan’s consumer price index (CPI) is projected to increase to 1.5 percent, while unemployment would be 3.4 percent, roughly in line with estimates for Asia as a whole, the international body wrote in its Global Economic Outlook Report published in the US on Monday. The figures are comparatively better than the IMF outlook for the rest of the world, which pegged real GDP growth at 3.1 percent, down from 3.3 percent
RSS