台灣建州運動反對國共的台海「兩岸服貿協議」，支持佔領立法院的台灣學生的訴求與行動(下)
五
這次「黑色島國青年陣線」佔領立法院的行動得到不少外媒的注意，美國一個很重要的媒體The Diplomat就連續登了兩篇報導，我們現在請台美與台灣鄉親們來讀一讀:
“Opponents of Cross-Strait Trade Pact Occupy Taiwan’s Legislature”
Protestors against the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement have occupied Taiwan’s legislature and are staging a sit-in.
By Shannon Tiezzi
The Diplomat
March 19, 2014
A cross-strait trade agreement faced strong opposition in Taiwan on Tuesday, as hundreds of protestors (mostly students, according to Taiwanese reports) occupied Taiwan’s legislature in a sign of opposition to the deal. Want China Times called the incident “without precedent in the history of Taiwan’s legislature.” The Associated Press reported that the protestors broke into the legislature around 9 pm on Tuesday night, and repelled efforts by police to remove them. The protests so far have remained non-violent on both sides, although police and students reportedly engaged in shoving matches within the building.
The Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement, the bill in question, has always been controversial. The legislation is a follow-up agreement to Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou’s signature cross-strait achievement, the 2010 Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement, which greatly reduced trade barriers between Beijing and Taipei. The service agreement would continue along the same way by removing market barriers to various service industries, including communications, construction, health-related and social services, tourism, and financial services.
Ma’s policy of improving cross-strait economic ties has come under fire from the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which believes Ma’s plan will result in crippling economic dependence on Beijing—thus increasing the chances of Taiwan being coerced into joining the People’s Republic of China. Of course, in addition to political concerns about Beijing, many opponents fear that the agreement will cost Taiwan jobs by giving Chinese companies increased access to the island’s market.
The political and economic repercussions of the services agreement have caused fierce debate among politicians and citizens alike. The original agreement was signed by the semi-official Straits Exchange Foundation and Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits back in June 2013, but opposition in Taiwan has prevented final legislative approval. According to a survey cited by the New York Times’ Sinosphere blog, nearly 45 percent of Taiwan residents oppose the services pact, with close to 33 percent in favor and 23 percent preferring not to respond.
The current round of protests was sparked by the majority Nationalist (KMT) Party’s ---Read More--- decision to try and push the bill through the legislature once and for all. The protestors believe this move was in violation of a former agreement reached by the KMT and DPP whereby each clause of the bill would be reviewed separately. According to the Taipei Times, the protestors plan to continue their sit-in until Friday, when the next meeting of the legislature is scheduled to occur. Taipei Times also reported that the DPP and another, smaller opposition party, the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU), will boycott the Legislative Yuan until the KMT retracts the bill from the agenda. DPP Chairman Su Tseng-chang said that the DPP’s “goal to review the pact clause-by-clause and to renegotiate the deal remains unchanged.”
Meanwhile, the KMT has accused the DPP of stalling tactics and political obstructionism in its determination to prevent the service agreement from moving forward. A statement on the KMT’s website [Chinese] reiterated that the KMT has “always supported” examining and voting on the agreement piece by piece, and blamed the fact that the agreement still has not made it through the legislature process on the DPP’s “malicious boycott.” According to Focus Taiwan, on Tuesday (just before the protests broke out), senior KMT lawmaker Lin Hung-chih accused the DPP of trying to “strangle” the agreement, and said the KMT would not allow that. As for the protests themselves, the KMT accused the DPP of “encouraging the people to express their opinions through irrational actions.” “The DPP should receive strict condemnation” for this, the statement added.
The feud between the KMT and DPP over the service agreement has also contributed to a split within the KMT. A public legal battle between Ma Ying-jeou and Wang Jin-pyng, the speaker of the Legislative Yuan, was rumored to be motivated in part by Ma’s frustration at Wang’s patience with DPP opposition to the service pact. The legal feud between Wang and Ma was seriously damaging for Ma—especially as the courts recently decided in Wang’s favor, allowing him to keep his party membership and to continue serving as speaker.
As the KMT decides how best to deal with the backlash against the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement, Beijing will be watching closely. Should the protestors force reconsideration of the services pact, it would seriously call into questions Ma’s ability to deliver on cross-strait agreements negotiated with Beijing. This, in turn, would make such negotiations less palatable to Beijing—and might force a recalculation as to the value of coercive vs cooperative strategies to bring Taiwan back under PRC control.
“Taiwanese Occupy Legislature Over China Pact”
By J. Michael Cole
The Diplomat
March 20, 2014
Thousands of Taiwanese were surrounding and occupying the Legislative Yuan (LY) in Taipei on March 19 after legislators from the ruling Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) expedited the review process of a services trade pact with China that many fear could have damaging repercussions on Taiwan’s economy and sovereignty.
Controversy over the Cross-Strait Services Trade Agreement (CSSTA) began in June 2013 after negotiators from Taiwan’s semi-official Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) signed the agreement, a follow-on to the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) signed in 2010, with their Chinese counterparts. The breadth and scope of the reciprocal agreement, which was negotiated behind closed doors and would open various sectors of the service industry to China, was such that many legislators from the KMT, whose leadership favors closer ties with China, balked, fearing the pact’s repercussions on their constituencies.
After the KMT imposed internal measures making dissent grounds for expulsion, its reluctant legislators fell in line and began the process of passing the pact in the legislature.
However, close scrutiny by opposition lawmakers, academics, and civic organizations, which held a series of peaceful protests, compelled the government to submit the CSSTA to the legislature for consideration. Further pressure from civil society, which feared negative consequences of the pact not only for Taiwan’s economy, but also for freedom of speech and other aspects of the nation’s democracy, eventually forced the government to compromise. A June 25, 2013 agreement stipulated that the pact would be reviewed clause-by-clause. Additionally, on September 25, parties agreed to hold a total of 16 public hearings — eight chaired by the KMT, and eight by the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) — for consultations with academics, NGOs, and many of the sectors that stood to be affected by the pact.
The KMT held its eight hearings within the space of a week, with several members of social groups and NGOs complaining about lack of access. Moreover, several business representatives were not invited to attend, or were informed at the last minute, making their participation all but impossible.
Following completion of the hearings and substantial input by academics and the business sector, KMT Legislator Chang Ching-chung, the presiding chair of the legislature’s Internal Administrative Committee, said the agreement could not be amended and had to be adopted as is, raising questions over the utility of the public hearings. The hearings and legislative battles over the CSSTA nevertheless made it impossible to pass it by the end of 2013, as the government had hoped.
Negotiations on the matter resumed in the legislature in March 2014, when DPP Legislator Chen Chi-mai secured the right to plan the agenda for a clause-by-clause review as agreed earlier. However, KMT legislators blocked the process, leading to clashes in the legislature over a period of three days. Meanwhile, civic organizations launched a sit-in outside the LY.
Then, on March 17, with the legislature brought to a standstill and the DPP occupying the podium, Chang, citing Article 61 of the Legislative Yuan Functions Act, announced that the review process had gone beyond the 90 days allotted for review. The agreement should therefore be considered to have been reviewed and be submitted to a plenary session on March 21 for a final vote. Immediately, the Executive Yuan “congratulated” Chang for successfully reviewing the agreement, even though no review was ever held, and experts later noted that Article 61 did not apply, as the CSSTA is a component of the ECFA, which itself is a “prospective treaty” (准條約) and not an executive order. With 65 members in the 113-seat legislature, the KMT was assured a victory, with expectations that the pact could be implemented as early as June 2014.
The sudden announcement caught everybody by surprise and sparked anger among the public. The sit-ins continued on the evening of March 17, followed by a much larger one on the evening of March 18.
Late in the evening, protesters — a mix of students, academics, civic organizations and others — climbed over the fence at the legislature and managed to enter the building. In the melee, one window of the LY was smashed and a police officer suffered serious injuries. At this writing, there was no confirmation whether the officer was the victim of a deliberate attack or, more likely, was injured by accident (protest leaders have repeatedly urged protesters to not damage property and not attack law enforcement authorities). A lawyer who was assigned to the protesters told The Diplomat that so far, six individuals had been arrested over the protest. About 300 members occupied the legislative floor overnight and succeeded in warding off several attempts by police to expel them. Several hundred others remained outside. The protesters demanded that the clause-by-clause review of the agreement be reinstated, otherwise they vowed to occupy the legislature until March 21, when the LY was scheduled to vote and pass the CSSTA. As late evening turned into night, the authorities cut water and electricity to the building. Premier Jiang Yi-huah, in a move that was largely seen as overreaction, ordered that riot police be sent in to evict the protesters, but that directive was not implemented.
By the morning of March 19, the protesters’ numbers had swelled to several thousand, who encircled the legislature and blocked every point of access, under the watchful eye of hundreds of police officers. At every corner of the building, groups chanted slogans, waved banners, and listened to speeches by legislators, academics, and student leaders, as supporters brought them water, food, and ventilators. At one point, one of the organizers announced that if their demands were not met by March 21, they would threaten to occupy the Presidential Office next. Inside, the core group had by then set up an ad hoc medical clinic and a communications center to coordinate their activities. Meanwhile, the activists — who accounted for about 90 percent of the entire group — used social media to broadcast the event live while using Facebook (Taiwan has the highest Facebook penetration rate in the world) to share pictures and video. More people showed up later on March 19, bringing the protest to upwards of 12,000 people.
While this was not the first time in recent years that activists occupied a government building — the Ministry of the Interior was similarly occupied in August 2013 in protest over a series of controversial demolitions and land seizures — the events at the LY are unprecedented. The protests are the result of several months of mounting anger at a government that is perceived to have become less accountable in recent years, perhaps as a result of mounting pressure from China. Beijing hopes to see such deals adopted as soon as possible so that the governments can move on to greater things, such as talks on a “peace agreement.”
Unsurprisingly, media close to the administration quickly pointed out the “undemocratic” nature of the protests (in fact, protesting is a democratic right) and engaged in fabrication to discredit the protesters, such as claiming that the groups had “vandalized the legislature” (which they have not) and that they were mobilized by DPP politicians (the civic organizations have kept the DPP and other parties at arms’ length). Lack of transparency in cross-strait deals, undue pressure by business groups on both sides of the Strait, governance with authoritarian tendencies, and the opposition DPP’s ham-fisted response to the many social challenges that confront the nation have resulted in a public that is increasingly disillusioned with its government and political parties. And this time, they deemed that things had gone too far and took matters into their own hands.
At this writing (March 20, 12:30am), several thousand people were still at the legislature, and it was unclear whether police would once again attempt to dislodge them. Late on the evening of March 19, members of gangster Chang An-le’s pro-unification party showed up at the protest and tried to start a fight with some participants, who failed to retaliate. Soon afterwards, pictures appeared on Facebook of suspected gangsters bearing knives, a chilling reminder of recent attacks in Hong Kong.
台灣建州運動發起人周威霖
David C. Chou
Founder, Formosa Statehood Movement
(an organization devoted in current stage to making Taiwan a territorial commonwealth of the United States)
