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 Chinese Communist Party (CCP) continues to bully Taiwan by conducting military drills extremely close to Taiwan in late May 2024 and announcing a legal opinion in June on how they would treat “Taiwan Independence diehards” according to the PRC’s Criminal Code. This article will describe how China’s Anaconda Strategy of psychological and legal asphyxiation is employed. The CCP’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and Chinese Coast Guard (CCG) conducted a “punishment military exercise” against Taiwan called “Joint Sword 2024A” from 23-24 May 2024, just three days after President William Lai (賴清德) of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was sworn in and
Former US president Donald Trump’s comments that Taiwan hollowed out the US semiconductor industry are incorrect. That misunderstanding could impact the future of one of the world’s most important relationships and end up aiding China at a time it is working hard to push its own tech sector to catch up. “Taiwan took our chip business from us,” the returnee US presidential contender told Bloomberg Businessweek in an interview published this week. The remarks came after the Republican nominee was asked whether he would defend Taiwan against China. It is not the first time he has said this about the nation’s
In a recent interview with the Malaysian Chinese-language newspaper Sin Chew Daily, former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) called President William Lai (賴清德) “naive.” As always with Ma, one must first deconstruct what he is saying to fully understand the parallel universe he insists on defending. Who is being “naive,” Lai or Ma? The quickest way is to confront Ma with a series of pointed questions that force him to take clear stands on the complex issues involved and prevent him from his usual ramblings. Regarding China and Taiwan, the media should first begin with questions like these: “Did the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)
The Yomiuri Shimbun, the newspaper with the largest daily circulation in Japan, on Thursday last week published an article saying that an unidentified high-ranking Japanese official openly spoke of an analysis that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) needs less than a week, not a month, to invade Taiwan with its amphibious forces. Reportedly, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has already been advised of the analysis, which was based on the PLA’s military exercises last summer. A Yomiuri analysis of unclassified satellite photographs confirmed that the PLA has already begun necessary base repairs and maintenance, and is conducting amphibious operation exercises