While top envoys from Taiwan and China met yesterday to sign accords at a hotel surrounded by barbed wire barricades, protesters continued demonstrations against the talks.
A motorcade of about 60 vehicles organized by the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) Taichung City branch honked their horns for several minutes in protest against the talks taking place inside the Windsor Hotel.
The procession drove around the city and blared messages criticizing China and the trade pacts over loudspeakers.
“We are here to protest against this incompetent government. President Ma Ying-jeou [馬英九] is an awful leader who is selling out Taiwan to Beijing with his China-leaning policies,” branch president Chen Ta-chun (陳大均) said through a loudspeaker.
ECFA
A handful of protesters also gathered outside the hotel, using bullhorns, gas horns and loudspeakers as they criticized a proposed economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) with China, which they said would draw Taiwan closer to China with no obvious benefits.
One of them burned a Chinese flag in full view of police deployed to maintain order and ensure the safety of Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林).
“Taiwan has never been a part of China,” protester Tsai Ting-kui (蔡丁貴) said. “We want the global community to understand the Taiwanese don’t support the course chosen by Ma Ying-jeou.”
FALUN GONG
Since Chen’s arrival in Taichung on Monday, he has been a lightning rod for various groups with grievances against China, including Tibetan activists and the Falun Gong spiritual movement.
About 500 Falun Gong practitioners staged an overnight sit-in near the hotel.
“We want Chen to hear our message and take it back to the mainland. Chen is a representative of the evil Chinese Communist Party,” Theresa Chu (朱婉琪) said on behalf of the Falun Gong protesters. “The Taiwanese government has not raised the matter of China’s human rights [abuses]. We feel very disappointed."
Many pedestrians seemed ambivalent about the DPP’s motorcade.
Less than a dozen onlookers expressed support for the protest, while most seemed uninterested.
A man working in a body shop dropped his tools and shook his head in disapproval upon seeing the protesters.
None of the DPP’s top participated in the protest and only about 10 police officers on motorcycles escorted the motorcade.
Fifty-year-old cab driver Shen Hsi-ming (沈細明) said he was indifferent to the cross-strait talks and protesters alike because “no matter which party is in power, life is still the same.”
“The protesters should be allowed to say what they want to say, but I am not very interested in what they are protesting about,” a woman surnamed Hsieh said.
“Everyone knows this government is doing a bad job, but what can the average person like me do about it?” she asked.
Meanwhile, a group of approximately 80 independence supporters from five civic groups who spent the night at an empty U-Bus depot across from the hotels where the Taiwanese and Chinese delegations were staying was forced to disperse when the bus company resumed operations.
The depot had agreed to shut down operations until tomorrow for security reasons because of its proximity to the hotels.
Tainan City Councilor Wang Ting-yu (王定宇) of the DPP said that the organizers received a call from the police at around 10am yesterday telling them to vacate the depot within two hours as buses would resume at noon.
“It is pathetic that our National Security Council and police force would rather kiss up to China than protect the rights of Taiwanese,” Wang said.
Wang also said he suspected that the bus company had been pressured into resuming operations to force the protesters to move out of direct view of Chiang’s hotel.
The depot manager, Liu Bang-chun (劉邦均), rejected that claim and said the decision was based on the company’s assessment of the situation.
The same group of protesters gathered again later last night near the hotel and were met by a much larger number of police in full anti-riot gear.
Chen Chun-yan (陳俊彥), a police captain from the Taichung City Second Precinct, said that the police would not forcefully disperse the crowd, as they were peaceful.
However, Chen Chun-yan said that the protesters had violated the Assembly and Parade Act (集會遊行法) by failing to apply to use the roads.
Although protesters insisted that their demonstration was peaceful, the group of mostly elderly people was met by a massive contingency of police officers wearing helmets and holding metal shields and wooden batons.
At a glance, the police deployed seemed to number between 300 and 400.
However, the Taichung City Police Bureau refused to disclose the number of police officers at the scene.
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