Taiwan Stands Behind Use of Force Against Protesters

Taiwan Stands Behind Use of Force Against Protesters 
 By AUSTIN RAMZYMARCH 24, 2014 

 TAIPEI, Taiwan — Taiwan’s prime minister said on Monday that the government had been justified in using force to remove demonstrators from the cabinet building earlier in the day, as students continued to occupy the nearby legislature in a protest against a trade bill with China. “What happened yesterday wasn’t police suppressing a street march,” Prime Minister Jiang Yi-huah said. “It was protesters breaking into the Executive Yuan, trying to occupy this building and paralyze our administrative workings,” he added, referring to the cabinet building. At least 174 people, including 119 police officers, were wounded as the police wielded wooden clubs and later used water trucks to block the growing protest. In a statement posted online, the protesters who have occupied the legislature, or Legislative Yuan, since last week said that they “strongly condemn the violence against the unarmed, weaponless students.” Mr. Jiang said that 61 people were arrested when the police cleared the building Monday morning, and that 35 of them faced possible prosecution. Continue reading the main storyVideo PLAY VIDEO VIDEO|0:42Credit Stringer/Taiwan/ReutersTaiwan Uses Force Against Protesters Taiwanese riot police used water cannons on protesters in Taipei as demonstrations continued against a controversial trade pact with mainland China. The government faces broadening concerns, as some student groups have now called for a work and school strike across this self-governed island of 23 million to allow more to attend the demonstrations in Taipei, the capital. In an hourlong news conference on Monday at the Executive Yuan, just hours after it had been cleared of demonstrators, Mr. Jiang urged students not to push for a strike. “The nature of this matter is that all levels of society have different views as to the signing of the service trade agreement, but that is no reason to use as a pretext for a national work and school strike,” he said. The China trade bill, which would allow cross-strait investment on dozens of service trades ranging from banking to funeral parlors, has touched deep roots of concern, including Taiwan’s own history of authoritarian rule and its uneasy relationship with China, an emerging giant that considers the island part of its own territory that must eventually be reunited. While many of the student demonstrators opposed the deal outright, others said they supported lowering trade barriers on some industries. Their most fundamental objection, they said, was to the way the deal was moved through Taiwan’s legislature. Members of Kuomintang, the governing party, forced the motion through to the legislative floor without a promised item-by-item review. The opposition Democratic Progressive Party cried foul. Many demonstrators have described the moves by the Kuomintang as “authoritarian,” a pointed reference to the party’s all-powerful role in Taiwan before democratization in the 1980s and ’90s. “Spread propaganda and ignore the opinion of the public, this is neither democracy nor rule of law,” a student leader, Lin Fei-fan, chanted from the rostrum of the occupied legislature on Sunday. Photo Students in Taipei, Taiwan, opposed to a government trade deal with China resumed their protest on Monday, a day after a clash with riot police officers erupted at the Executive Yuan. Credit Lam Yik Fei/Getty Images The Kuomintang holds a comfortable margin in the legislature, meaning it can eventually ratify the trade pact, which was signed by semiofficial organizations representing Taiwan and China last June. “What the government has been doing is trying to play this as low-profile as possible,” said Lin Jih-wen, a political science research fellow at Academia Sinica, a state-funded research institution in Taipei. “It doesn’t want society to discuss this and wanted to just pass this in a short period of time. That exposed not only the outrage of the students but also the general public.” Continue reading the main story Apple after Jobs: Pretty much the same as ever Name-calling in the virtual playground Facebook's hack, a language of tech competition Continue reading the main story Advertisement President Ma Ying-jeou, who has made closer relations with China a crucial goal, said the accord was necessary for Taiwan to maintain its economic competitiveness. He said that without this pact, which was a follow-up agreement to the 2010 Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement between the two sides, Taiwan will be unable to pursue agreements with other countries and trade organizations, like the United States-led Trans-Pacific Partnership. Trade between China and Taiwan has rapidly expanded during Mr. Ma’s six years in office, nearly doubling to reach $197 billion last year. But some of the debate over the trade pact revolves around concerns that China may use economics to further its claims to Taiwan. “Sovereignty lurks behind this at all times,” said Titus C. Chen, an associate research fellow at the Institute of International Relations at National Chengchi University in Taipei. “It’s a unique Taiwan concern. I think this service agreement is just one more building block for President Ma to inch toward a peace agreement or fundamental relations with China.” The students occupying the legislature said they will continue their protest until the trade bill is returned to committee for an itemized review, and they have asked for passage of a law that will allow for closer scrutiny of agreements with China. Unlike the protest in the Executive Yuan, the government has expressed a willingness to tolerate the occupation of the legislature for the time being. “The Legislative Yuan is a place for the people’s representatives to discuss laws and governmental affairs, and sometimes, because there isn’t consensus, things stop for several days,” Mr. Jiang said.