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.
It is employment pass renewal season in Singapore, and the new regime is dominating the conversation at after-work cocktails on Fridays. From September, overseas employees on a work visa would need to fulfill the city-state’s new points-based system, and earn a minimum salary threshold to stay in their jobs. While this mirrors what happens in other countries, it risks turning foreign companies away, and could tarnish the nation’s image as a global business hub. The program was announced in 2022 in a bid to promote fair hiring practices. Points are awarded for how a candidate’s salary compares with local peers, along
China last month enacted legislation to punish —including with the death penalty — “die-hard Taiwanese independence separatists.” The country’s leaders, including Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), need to be reminded about what the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has said and done in the past. They should think about whether those historical figures were also die-hard advocates of Taiwanese independence. The Taiwanese Communist Party was established in the Shanghai French Concession in April 1928, with a political charter that included the slogans “Long live the independence of the Taiwanese people” and “Establish a republic of Taiwan.” The CCP sent a representative, Peng
Japan and the Philippines on Monday signed a defense agreement that would facilitate joint drills between them. The pact was made “as both face an increasingly assertive China,” and is in line with Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr’s “effort to forge security alliances to bolster the Philippine military’s limited ability to defend its territorial interests in the South China Sea,” The Associated Press (AP) said. The pact also comes on the heels of comments by former US deputy national security adviser Matt Pottinger, who said at a forum on Tuesday last week that China’s recent aggression toward the Philippines in
The Ministry of National Defense on Tuesday announced that the military would hold its annual Han Kuang exercises from July 22 to 26. Military officers said the exercises would feature unscripted war games, and a decentralized command and control structure. This year’s exercises underline the recent reforms in Taiwan’s military as it transitions from a top-down command structure to one where autonomy is pushed down to the front lines to improve decisionmaking and adaptability. Militaries around the world have been observing and studying Russia’s war in Ukraine. They have seen that the Ukrainian military has been much quicker to adapt to