Sunflower movement activists yesterday threatened to escalate protests if the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) refuses to engage in open debate over “supervisory articles” for negotiations with China, demanding that the party address flaws in its proposed draft legislation.
Protesters from about 20 civic groups gathered in front of the Legislative Yuan’s front gate, shouting their rejection of “fake” legislative supervision of negotiations with China.
“The Sunflower movement is not finished yet — we are extremely anxious about where DPP trade policy is going,” Economic Democracy Union convener Lai Chung-chiang (賴中強) said, adding that premier-designate Lin Chuan (林全) promised to move forward with the cross-strait service trade agreement and trade in goods agreement.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
Lai’s organization spearheaded early opposition to the service trade agreement, which culminated in the Legislative Yuan being surrounded by protesters for three weeks during 2014’s Sunflower movement, after the main legislative chamber was occupied by student activists. Passing supervisory regulations to address opaque “black box” negotiations with China by guaranteeing legislative oversight and civic participation was a key demand of the movement.
The relatively “flexible” and “loose” version of supervisory regulations proposed by the DPP caucus — which would not be applied retroactively to past agreements or negotiations already underway — raised questions about whether they were laying a path for continuing President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) China trade policy, Lai said, calling for the DPP and New Power Party (NPP) caucuses to respond to activists’ objections within a week, and to hold open dialogues and debates over differences in opinion.
The protesters said the draft legislation was too weak to guarantee legislative supervisory powers, meaningful civil participation or rigorous review of the effect of agreements. They also criticized it for failing to include special standards for sovereignty-related negotiations and also for using language referring to Taiwan as an “area” instead of a nation.
“If the DPP intends to take a different course [from Ma’s administration], it should not use previous methods of dealing with the objections raised by civil society,” former Sunflower movement spokesman Lin Fei-fan (林飛帆) said, blasting DPP legislators for allegedly claiming that activists’ objections were the result of “misunderstandings.”
“I think some of the demands are because of a lack of understanding [of DPP draft legislation] while others are because of genuine differences of opinion,” said DPP Legislator Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋), who met with protesters on behalf of the DPP caucus.
While NPP legislators Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) and Hsu Yung-ming (徐永明) accepted the protesters’ demands for open discussions and debate, Lee said his party’s caucus believed it was important to follow Legislative Yuan procedures for reviewing legislation.
“We will seek to work in opinions from all parties and invite everyone to participate in public hearings to fully express their views,” he said.
His remarks drew cries of “not satisfied” from protesters, with Lin saying that a “public hearing” would not satisfy protesters’ demands for an open debate and promising to return to “get an answer” if the DPP fails to respond within a week.
Meanwhile, Wang Puchen (王炳忠) and other protesters affiliated with the “deep-blue” New Party also showed up to “support” the activists — breaking out periodically into shouts accusing the DPP of “political fraud” for switching its position on supervisory articles.
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus echoed the activists, calling on DPP chairperson and president-elect Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) to apologize to the public for the party’s change of attitude.
KMT Legislator Alicia Wang (王育敏) said the DPP had a “two-state doctrine” imbedded in its past draft legislation, which put “Taiwan and China” in the name of the proposed law.
“Now it is gone, meaning a great deal has changed,” Wang said. “The party chairperson should offer an explanation and acknowledge that what she had upheld was a mistake. Should she not apologize to the KMT and the Executive Yuan for what she has done?”
Wang called on the activists and civil groups that participated in the Sunflower movement to “use the same standard that they had for overseeing the Ma administration to oversee the incoming government led by Tsai.”
KMT Legislator Chang Li-shan (張麗善) seconded Wang’s remarks, calling on the Appendectomy Project organizers — who had called for the recall of the incompetent lawmakers who were mainly, but not limited to, KMT members — to take the axe to the DPP lawmakers as well.
Additional reporting by Alison Hsiao
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods