--TAIWAN Wild Strawberries Movement—
!! ACTION 1106 !!
Is “1984” coming back? A police-state revives in Asia?
Taiwan Studen

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2008/11/17
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Taipei, Taiwan

Since Nov 6th 2008  

Dear Sirs:           

We are a group of students comprising students from universities all over Taiwan; we do not belong to any parties or political organizations before we joined wild strawberry. Our generation in Taiwan is called the “strawberry” generation, meaning we are spoiled to be able to afford stress. However, today we stand out for a better future! Today is our 11th day peaceful sit-in protest at the Liberty Square in Taipei (also know as the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial). Your supports are very crucial for us, we hope this document will help you understand our “democracy in danger” in Taiwan, an country next to Hong Kong, Japan, China and Philippine in East Asia. Our requests are:      

First, Amend the law restricting the citizens' rights to assemble. Under the current law in Taiwan, any assemble or protest must get approval by the police and administration (often the targets of such protests). We hereby petition to amend the law under which no police approval will be required. Though, notifying the police or relevant authorities will be the only thing needed to do for the citizens to assemble and march. Second, Bring to justice those who have committed human-rights violations. during Chen Yun-Lin's (Head of China's Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait - ARAT) visit to Taiwan at November 3-7), while Mr. Chen was here, many regular Taiwanese folks were treated cruelly by the policemen at the streets or in public spaces, even these people did not do anything dangerous or just bringing our national flag with them. Policemen even rushed in to a music record shop and forced them to turn of the music (at that time they were playing Song of Taiwan) and shut the door up. All these are serious violations against basic human rights. We, as Taiwanese, have lost the freedom of speech and assembly, freedom to play music in your own shop, anytime, any music, with reasonable volume that we have been fighting for the past forty years. Below, we highlight instances of human-rights abuses in which our citizens' constitutional rights were violated between Nov. 3-7, 2008: 

Violating the Freedom of Speech and Personal Freedom       

During ARAT Chairman Mr. Chen's visit, we have seen and hereby highlight many instances in which citizens of our country attempted to wave our flag, peacefully protest Mr. Chen's visit or President Ma's pro-China policies while wearing T-shirts or bearing signs (irrespective of their location and distance to Mr. Chen procession).  These peaceful individuals invariably ended up:

   i) having their freedom restricted or detained for no reasons,

   ii) having their flags taken away,

   iii) having their flags torn up/snapped up by police, and/or sometimes

   v) sustaining bodily injuries having been physically beaten. 

In one instance, three girls in their early 20s bearing flags had their flags taken away by force. They were shoved and one woman had one finger broken; they were later

detained at a police precinct and denied medical treatment. That young woman is suffering severe mental trauma for bearing her country's flag.          

Police Intimidation          

A gang of about ten policemen, led by their sheriff, stormed into a music record store while it was playing “the Song of Taiwan”, which sheriff Lee deemed as inciting crowd emotions. The record shop is nearby (more than 200m) where ARAT's Mr. Chen and Mr. Wu Po Hsiung, the Chairman of Taiwan's ruling Nationalist Party (or KMT, Kuomintang) were having dinner banquet. Mr. Lee forced the store owner to stop the music, then, several policemen forcibly shuttered the front entrance into the store, against the owner's free will - damaging the entrance shutter in the process. 

Excessively extension of the definition of the Restricted Zone by Police force!      

Under our law, the Restricted Zone is clearly defined and only a few government buildings may fit this definition, and all these violations occurred when the police liberally stretched the definition of the Restricted Zone - in contravention to the intentions stipulated in the laws of Taiwan.         

Excessive Police Force / Violence!        

On the night before Mr. Chen's departure on November 7, protester-police clashes broke out in which many individuals were badly injured. Many unarmed protesters and pedestrians were brutally beaten. A number of things may all have contributed to this taking place. Expansive interpretation of the Restricted Zone is one and the government repeatedly denying Taiwan citizens the right to peacefully protest Mr. Chen's visit/ Mr. Ma's policy is another. While many individuals have been arrested, no one single police person has been arrested or held accountable for excessive use of force against common, innocent civilians - amongst other individuals, a reporter of Formosa TV bearing a microphone, a teenage boy being beaten for no reason other than being nearby, etc.   

As younger generations and college students in Taiwan, we saw in one week scary reminders of what Taiwan must have been like two, three decades ago. Vividly captured on video, these violations of basic human values - right of speech, freedom of assembly, not wanting one's freedom or safety threatened - have compelled us to petition our government to:     

  1. President Ma Ying-jeou and Premier Liu Chao-shiuan must publicly apologize to all citizens.
  2. National Police Agency Director-General Wang Cho-chiun and National Security Bureau Director Tsai Chao-ming must step down.
  3. The Legislative Yuan must amend the Parade and Assembly Law, which currently restricts the rights of the people.

 

We here in Taiwan have enjoyed vibrant democracy for twenty years; we hope this will never change and this is why we're making these petitions. We are grateful for your kind attention in making our petition public. Should you need further information, please email us: 1106action@gmail.com. 

The Wild Strawberries         

LiveBroadcast from the Liberty Square, Taipei, Taiwan http://live.yahoo.com/wenli

Official English website http://taiwanstudentmovement2008.blogspot.com/

Our email: 1106action@gmail.com

Protest Statement: http://action1106.blogspot.com/2008/11/protest-statement.html  
 

The Wild Strawberries: We are a group of non-partisan students organized by students from National Taiwan University and other universities all over Taiwan. We have organized a peaceful sit-in at the Liberty Square. We took our name after the student movement of 1990 which many have referred to as the Wild Lilies movement.        

Selected Media Source

CNN i-REPORT  http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-148496?ref=feeds%2Flatest

[Taipei Times] Wild Strawberries call for probes

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YOUTH GONE WILD: The demonstrators asked the government which article authorizes the police to stop people from waving Taiwan’s flag, but not China’s flag 
By Flora Wang/Friday, Nov 14, 2008, Page 4 
 
Students yesterday perform a skit during a sit-in protest at the National Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall, demanding that the government amend the Assembly and Parade Law. 
 
In an on-line statement on the students’ Web blog (action1106.blogspot.com) yesterday, the students urged the government to explain to the public specifically which law authorized the police to prevent people from waving Taiwan’s national flag, but allowed people to hold China’s national flag during demonstrations for and against the visit by Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait Chairman Chen Yunlin (
陳 雲林) last week. 
 
The students also urged the government to clarify to the public whether all police officers involved in the security measures last week carried out their duties in accordance with normal administrative procedures and urged the authorities to reflect on whether their measures had been excessive. 
 
The students have been staging silent sit-ins nationwide, protesting what they call excessive police force during Chen’s five-day stay. 
 
They are demanding an apology from President Ma Ying-jeou (
馬英九) and Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉 兆玄) and the resignation of National Police Agency Director-General Wang Cho-chun (王卓 鈞) and National Security Bureau Director-General Tsai Chao-ming (蔡朝明). 
 
Also on the students’ agenda is an immediate amendment to the Assembly and Parade Law (
集會遊行法), which currently obliges event organizers to gain police approval before holding rallies. 
 
On their Web blog, the students have included numerous hyperlinks to video clips showing police security measures last week, including one that showed a plainclothes police officer telling a person videotaping the protest at Zhongshan Bridge to immediately leave “or I will ask a member of the Special Weapons And Tactics [SWAT] team to arrest you.” 
 
“We can see that the law enforcement authorities assigned police officers a mission to complete and that police officers would rather excessively limit or even violate people’s basic human rights in a bid to save their own jobs,” the student protesters’ statement said, adding that the police had violated people’s constitutional rights by resorting to force against those who did not pose an obvious and immediate threat to Chen. 
 
The students also shrugged off Ma’s comments on Wednesday that excessive use of police force had only occurred in isolated cases. 
 
“These illegal and unconstitutional incidents and violations of human rights took place because the government expanded the scale of law enforcement during Chen’s stay in Taiwan,” student movement spokesman Lee Li-wei (
李立偉) said. 
 
Meanwhile, Lee called on teachers and students who supported the movement to gather and broaden the scale of the sit-in at Liberty Square, outside the Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall tomorrow. 
 
Lee said about 50 students from Hong Kong Polytechnic University would launch a sit-in at their school in support of the movement today.

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