Minister of the Interior Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) vowed yesterday to maintain safety during next week’s cross-strait talks in Taichung, saying police brutality should not happen this time around.
Talking to reporters at the legislature’s Internal Administration Committee yesterday morning, Jiang said the Taichung City Government and Taichung City Police Bureau would take care of security for the meeting between Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) Chairman Chiang Pin-kung (江丙坤) and Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林).
The central government will do its best to support them, Jiang said.
Normally about 200 police would be deployed, Jiang said. The number would be boosted to 1,000 for Chen’s trips outside the city, he said, adding that it would increase in accordance with the scale of protests if the situation escalates.
“We will do our best to prevent any bloody conflict,” he said. “Such regretful incidents as police attacks on civilians or reporters should not happen again.”
National Police Agency (NPA) Director-General Wang Cho-chiun (王卓鈞) said he did not know whether Beijing would send a security detail to protect Chinese media covering the meeting. No matter who they send, security operations would be handled by Taiwanese authorities, he said.
Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Deputy Minister Liu Te-shun (劉德勳) said a Chinese security detail could come here as “professionals,” but they could not perform security duties.
Council Chairwoman Lai Shin-yuan (賴幸媛) reiterated the administration’s resolve to protect freedom of speech, saying Taiwan was a democracy where individual freedom to express opinions should be respected and protected as long as it is done in a peaceful, reasonable and legal fashion.
No matter what happened, Lai said the meeting and other arrangements would go ahead as planned and she believed the Ministry of the Interior and security agencies would use their experience and professionalism in a proper manner.
Lai said three sets of talks have been held, including two in China, and the nine agreements and one consensus signed thus far have produced “positive results.”
Lai made the remarks during a long break in the legislative committee meeting after it ground to a halt at around 10am because the ruling and opposition parties were arguing over whether Chiang should attend the meeting.
The meeting did not resume until 6pm when the chairwoman, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Chiu Yi-ying (邱議瑩), declared the meeting over.
Chiu voiced regret over Chiang’s no-show, accusing him of spiting the legislature by ignoring the committee’s invitation to deliver a report.
“I don’t know what he is afraid of,” she said. “He said he is a private individual, but he has the airs of a bureaucratic official so big that not even his superior Mrs Lai [Shin-yuan] can make him come to the committee.”
Had Chiang dared to adopt such a belligerent approach at the negotiation table, the public would have praised his courage, she said.
“But judging from his previous performance, he has proved himself to be someone who is afraid to risk his neck and an opportunist who only pays attention to personal interests and toadying up to China,” she said. “I feel sorry for him.”
Chiu said she didn’t know why Chiang did not attend the meeting.
Chiang later told reporters he did not participate in the negotiations of cross-strait talks and secondly, he simply followed precedents.
Although Chiang did not say why he did not attend the committee meeting, it turned out that he was doing interviews with the Chinese-language United Evening News and ERA News in the morning and briefing the media about the upcoming cross-strait meeting in the afternoon.
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