Participants in a rally didn’t
seem to see the irony in taking part in a pro-ROC event organized by
individuals who want to unify Taiwan with authoritarian China
Today I saw
Taiwan’s past. Strike that, today, I saw the Republic of China’s (ROC) past.
Its minions gathered on Ketagalan Blvd to express their love for the ROC and
their support for police officers who have been working extra long hours in the
past six weeks amid a series of protests.
As I approached
the scene, it quickly became clear to me that the people who’d heeded the call by the
just-created New May Fourth Movement had travelled from the past. A great many
of them looked like they’d fought the Japanese in World War II. A few looked
like they may have been around when the original May Fourth movement was created in 1919 following the conclusion of the Great War.
The contrast with the Sunflower Movement, against whose “violent” actions they
were rallying, could not have been starker. The average age of the crowd was easily three
times that of the student protesters. My partner was shocked when on stage,
leading the crowd, materialized an elderly man who, in her youth and when
Taiwan was still under authoritarian rule, had haunted their school lives by
teaching them the exact same songs and dances that we were now hearing.
There was a
large contingent of people — again in their 70s — wearing white T-shirts from
pro-unification gangster Chang An-le’s Unification Party, with a big map of
China (including Taiwan of course) printed in red at the back. Most of them
were from out of town, primarily Longtan in Taoyuan County. From the looks
on their faces, most of them didn’t seem to have a clue why they were there. They were probably offered a bit of money, a free lunch box, and a “tour” of Taipei.
As we got off
the cab, we immediately came upon an elderly man sitting on the ground with a
series of propaganda papers arranged in the shape of a cross. One that
stood out compared Lin I-hsiung, the former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)
chairman whose family was massacred during Martial Law, to the devil. Apparently
one of the devil’s many iterations is to launch a hunger strike against unsafe
nuclear power in a bid to avoid millions of people being irradiated following a meltdown (silly me: I’d always thought that the devil wanted to roast people up!).
Giving away ROC flags. Note the donation box |
An old man, half
of his teeth missing, approached me as I was snapping pictures of the woman I
believe is Chang An-le’s partner. “Do you support the
police?” he asked me in English. Implicit in his question, of course, was that
the student leaders whose protesting had led to a massive police mobilization weren’t. I could have answered in several ways, but I chose to be diplomatic.
“Of course I support the police! Everybody does.” That seemed to satisfy him.
He was friendly; many weren’t, as is often the case whenever I encounter deep
“blue” or pro-unification groups, who somehow seem to sense my liberal and
pro-democratic inclinations and accompanying disdain for authoritarian China.
I saw several
donation boxes for the New May Fourth Movement, and could only shake my head at
the idea of those donors being deceived into giving money to Chang An-le, the
man who, along with the pro-unification New Party, was very likely behind this
whole enterprise. As I have long feared, Chang, who returned to Taiwan in June
2013 after sixteen years on the run, is an instrument of the Chinese Communist
Party (CCP) who has no compunction in using Taiwan’s democracy against itself.
Elderly participants wear Chang An-le's party T-shirt |
Police estimates 20,000 people. Really? |
I’m sure some of
the people who gathered outside Taipei City Hall in the morning and on
Ketagalan Blvd in the afternoon were well-intentioned and that they did want to support the police
force. The problem is that because of the disinformation they have been fed by
the government and its propaganda arms in the media, they were targeting the wrong group of
people with their anger. They bought the line that the activists sowed “chaos”
and instability, but could not be bothered to look for the actual root causes of that
escalation, which were failing government mechanisms, lack of accountability and
transparency, “black box” deals with authoritarian China, the vested interests
of individuals in government, and the unhealthy influence of gigantic
corporations on cross-strait policy making. Of course everybody desires social stability, and I am convinced that the Sunflower Movement leadership agrees
with this view. But stability cannot serve as a reason for inaction when those who
govern us are irresponsive to the public and adopt policies that are
detrimental to the nation. Otherwise, why should we expect people to stand up
to tyrants, or large business conglomerates that abuse their employees or
poison the environment? Of course protests are destabilizing, but there are
times when inconveniencing the public is the lesser of two evils. We’re all for
stability and public order, but not at any cost.
Interestingly, very
few police officers were deployed today, much less than the 150 that were
supposed to ensure security at the rally. And most of the barbed wire and gates
that had become a staple of the area surrounding the Presidential Office were
removed overnight. (All photos by the author, except crowd shot, Yahoo)
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