MCLC: protesters occupy Taiwan legislature (1)

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: Li-Ping Chen <lipingch at usc.edu>
Subject: protesters occupy Taiwan legislature (1)
***************************************************

Two more pieces about the protests in Taiwan.

Li-Ping Chen

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Source: CNN 
(3/21/14):http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/19/world/asia/taiwan-student-protests/

Taiwan Legislature occupiers' ultimatum passes without response from
government
By Ray Sanchez and Zoe Li, CNN

(CNN) -- Hundreds of student protesters barricaded inside Taiwan's
Legislature for the past four days say they are disappointed by the
government's failure to respond to their ultimatum Friday.

The demonstrators, mostly university students, are protesting against the
ruling party's push for a trade pact with China, which they claim will
hurt the island. The movement has been dubbed the "Sunflower Revolution"
by Taiwanese media.

The group leading the protest -- The Coalition of Student and Civic Groups
against the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement -- announced the
ultimatum on Thursday, demanding that President Ma Ying-jeou withdraw the
controversial trade agreement and issue an apology by noon Friday.

As the deadline passed, no direct response from Ma was given, and student
protesters appeared on Taiwanese television expressing their
disappointment. They said they would continue to occupy Legislature and
would announce their next move at a press conference to be held at 6 p.m.
local time (E.T. 6 a.m.) Friday.

The protesters entered the main assembly hall inside the Legislative Yuan
in Taipei on Tuesday night and blocked the entrances with chairs,
according to images and accounts filed from the scene with CNN iReport
<http://ireport.cnn.com/topics/1108725>.

Police responded but had not dispersed the protesters, who also filled the
streets around the Legislature in the center of Taipei.

By March 19, Taiwan's state news agency reported that 38 police officers
were injured when more than 400 protesters took over the Legislature.

Four protesters were arrested in two unsuccessful attempts to evict them,
the news agency reported. Police said there were more than 2,000
protesters both inside and outside the building, with a equal number of
officers on the scene.

"We do not want to clash with the police," said protester and iReporter
Shanny Chang, 19. "We just have to let the government know that never try
to fool the people."

One CNN iReporter said that after the protesters took over, hundreds
gathered outside the building, with some making speeches and singing songs.

In a video, a young woman sings Bob Dylan's song "The Times They are
a-Changin'," which many associate with the protest spirit of the 1960s.

"She played the Dylan song because she thinks the lyrics match the ongoing
events happening in Taiwan," said iReporter George Chang, 24, who shot the
video. "Bob Dylan isn't really that popular in Taiwan, especially not to
the 8th grade generation, what Taiwanese call children born after 1991,
but to the older generations I think he isn't a stranger to them."

The trade pact was signed last year in Shanghai to ease investment and
trade between the two longtime adversaries, mainland China and Taiwan.

"The agreement was passed without proper procedure; that's why the people
are angry," said Kaiyu Chang, who shot this photo of a crowd assembled in
Taipei Wednesday.

But opponents have voiced concerns that not only will Taiwan's economy be
hurt as businesses and investments flow to China, but the island's
democratic system could be undermined by closer ties with the mainland.

"The trade agreement was not supervised by the people of Taiwan, and
benefits only big companies and harnesses our jobs," Chang wrote. "But I
do agree we need to open Taiwan to the world, even China too. But NOT this
way, not by signing an agreement that is not fair to us and was negotiated
by people who have no profession in these territories. We must rewrite the
agreement and make it work for the both of us, towards a peaceful future
between the strait of Taiwan."

An iReporter identified as kwarrior, an Asian-American living in
Taiwan, wrote that the government's handling of the trade agreement "was
unconstitutional and a blatant violation of the people's rights. ... I
care deeply because my parents are Taiwanese and they always loved their
nation like no other. I am personally affected because I value the rights
of the people to voice and make changes in a democratic country."

In a statement, Amnesty International urged security forces to show
restraint.

"The situation is clearly tense. ... While police have a duty to maintain
order and to protect the safety of the public, the response must only be
proportionate to the threat. Force should only be used as a last resort.
The authorities must ensure the rights of all those protesting are upheld
and respected," said Roseann Rife, the group's East Asia research director.

Last month, Taiwan and China held their highest-level talks in more than
six decades, marking the first government-to-government contact since the
pair's acrimonious split in 1949.

Wang Yu-chi of Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council, which oversees the
island's China policy, met with his mainland counterpart, Zhang Zhijun of
China's Taiwan Affairs Office.

After the meeting, China's state news agency Xinhua said the two sides had
agreed to open a regular communication channel.

"We should both be resolute to not let cross-strait relations suffer any
more twists and turns and never let (the relationship) go backward," Zhang
was quoted as saying.

Previous contact between the two sides has been conducted through
semi-official foundations or through political parties, not by government
ministers acting in their official capacities.

Beijing considers Taiwan a breakaway province and has never ruled out the
use of force to achieve reunification.

Taiwan also calls itself the Republic of China.

Relations between the two sides have improved since Taiwan President Ma
Ying-jeou came to power in 2008. On Wednesday, Ma called for the passage
of the trade pact.


====================================================

Source: The Economists (3/20/14):
http://www.economist.com/blogs/banyan/2014/03/politics-taiwan

Students in the house
By Banyan

NEARLY three days into their occupation of the debating chamber of the
Legislative Yuan, Taiwan’s parliament, in Taipei, dozens of activists,
mostly students, show no sign of flagging. They broke in on Tuesday
evening, March 18th, and resisted attempts by the police to evict them
overnight. Since then, a stand-off has persisted. The police are stopping
new arrivals from joining them, but allow in food and water. The
protesters include a team of white-coated medics. They look well settled.

Three legislators from the main opposition, the Democratic Progressive
Party (DPP), started 70-hour hunger-strikes just before the occupation.
They are taking eight-hour shifts in the parliament to afford the
protesters extra protection—to shift the students, the police will also
have to manhandle the legislators.

Outside, a crowd of several hundred ignores the drizzle to listen to
speeches and songs, wave artificial sunflowers, and shout denunciations of
the government and of Taiwan’s president, Ma Ying-jeou.

The occupation was billed as lasting 120 hours, to block a plenary
parliamentary session on Friday 21st March, and to provide a deadline for
the government to meet the protesters’ demands. These are three-fold: they
want Mr Ma to come to the chamber himself to apologise for the way in
which his party pushed an agreement on opening up services trade with
China through parliament on Monday (available here
<http://www.ecfa.org.tw/SerciveTradeAgreement1.aspx?pid=7&cid=26&pageid=0>,
 in Chinese); they also want the parliamentary speaker, Wang Jin-pyng (who
happens to be a rival to Mr Ma in the ruling party, the Kuomintang, or KMT
) to come to pay his respects; and they want legislation passed to
institutionalise parliament’s right to scrutinise such agreements item by
item.

The DPP insists the students are acting on their own initiative. But it is
supporting their protest, which it believes is tapping a rich vein of
discontent with the government, focusing on the services-trade agreement.

The sit-in was provoked by what the DPP sees as the KMT’s breaking of its
promise to allow a parliamentary committee to review the agreement clause
by clause. At a press conference on March 20th, the DPP’s chairman, Su
Tseng-chang, portrayed this as a “key moment” for Taiwan’s
quarter-century-old democracy, which he said the party would “do whatever
it takes” to protect.

In less lofty terms, the DPP seems to have spotted an opportunity to
exploit the unpopularity of a man they call “a 9% president”—a reference
to the low point Mr Ma’s approval rating fell to last year in opinion
polls—on an issue where they think he is weak. With local elections in
December and a new presidential contest due in 2016, when Mr Ma will have
to stand down, the DPP seems to think it has the KMT on the run.

Improving relations with China has been a central theme of Mr Ma’s
presidency since he took office in 2008. In 2010 China and Taiwan signed
the Economic Co-operation Framework Agreement (ECFA), significantly
boosting cross-strait ties. The services agreement, signed last June, is
part of the effort to implement that framework.

At the press conference, Mr Su spoke under a banner reading: “Demand
substantial review; restart negotiations with China.” The DPP argues the
agreement will hurt small businesses on Taiwan and is lopsided in some of
its market-opening measures. But also, the party’s roots are in the
movement that wants Taiwan to declare formal independence from China; it
worries about Taiwan’s becoming too dependent economically on the
mainland. Hsiao Bi-khim, one of the DPP hunger-strikers, thinks most
people on Taiwan are behind it on this, since they have yet to see the
benefits they were promised from ECFA. The economy is still, by local
standards, sluggish.

For his part, Mr Ma may be thinking about his legacy, and wanting to use
his remaining years in power to make a breakthrough in relations with
China. Last month Nanjing in China played host to the first formal meeting
between ministers from China and Taiwan in their government capacities
since the end of the civil war in 1949 formalised the division. A next
step would be a summit between Mr Ma and China’s president, Xi Jinping.
Hopes that the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation summit in Beijing this
autumn might provide an opportunity are fading. But it would be easier to
achieve a meeting elsewhere if the implementation of ECFA were going well.

In the shorter term, however, Mr Ma has a nasty local problem. The
students say they will not leave after their five-day deadline if their
demands have not been met; and they may take their “occupy” strategy to
other targets: Mr Ma’s own office, for example.

It is already highly unusual for a government to have tolerated the
seizure of parliament by protesters for so long. But, fearful of the ugly
headlines using force against peaceful students would attract, it does not
have many easy options.