04.27.05
Riot at CKS Airport
What happens when you get a bunch of extreme independence supporters meeting a bunch of extreme unification supporters in the presence of a totally incompetent police force? Well, we found out yesterday when they all descended on the main airport in Taiwan to ’see off’ Lien Chan on his trip to China.
ESWN has done an excellent job of describing what happened, so I won’t repeat it here. The money quote:
Much of the fighting came under the watchful eye of police on duty, who remained in a line formation waiting for orders from their superiors. Only after the fighting stopped did police move closer to the scene, failing to arrest any of the assailants who walked away in full view. Chen Jei-tien, chief of the Aviation Police Bureau, has been dismissed from his job at 11pm that day.
A few additional thoughts:
- It is pretty amazing that any police force, with a great deal of prior warning and plenty of personnel, can fail to secure an airport of all places. Several of the protestors managed to let off firecrackers inside - can you imagine what would happen to anyone found with explosives in e.g. a U.S. Airport?
- Whenever there is any violent protest in Taiwan you can guarantee that there will be at least one member of the Taiwanese parliament either inciting things or physically involved in it. This time there was a DPP and TSU member, last time (pan-Blue riots after the 2004 presidential election), it was PFP and KMT leaders. It would be nice to see them kicked out of their respective parties; It does seems that the DPP are investigating one legislator, but I’m not holding my breath.
The main point is that this will happen again when Lien returns from China unless the police sort things out. You only need to look at the reaction of the two extreme political parties to see they’re already itching for a rematch. The TSU (violently pro-independence):
Chen Chien-ming, secretary-general of the Taiwan Solidarity Union, accused New Party supporters of starting the fight at the airport.
The TSU supporters stayed in their designated areas, but the police failed to maintain order, allowing the pro-unification “pan blue” side to start the trouble, Chen said.
The New Party (violently pro-unification):
New Party Chairman Yok Mu-ming also condemned the violence, but he said the TSU and the airport police should take full responsibility.
Yok said that his party will “from this day on declare war on the TSU and there will be no end to the struggle.”
Tim Maddog said,
April 27, 2005 at 10:41 pm
I agree with your assessment of the performance (or lack thereof) by the police. If that had happened in the U.S., people would have been *shot* by the police. Not that I agree with that method, but the extreme opposite behavior by Taiwan’s police (i.e., you can do anything without fear of being arrested) is what leads to situations like the one yesterday and the ones that occurred on 3/20/2004, 3/27/2004, 4/3/2004, 4/10/2004, etc.
However, I *vehemently* disagree with your characterization of the TSU as “*violently* pro-independence.” Yok Mu-ming (New Party) was interviewed by FTV yesterday and said that he wished Wang Lan (the female gang leader) would join his party! Note that ESWN’s main sources (Ming Pao and China Times) in the post to which you refer have no compunctions about lying through their teeth.
Make no mistake about it, the gangsters and the pan-blues are one and the same. Read just about anything I’ve written since the riots that “broke out” in Taipei, Taichung, and Kaohsiung on 3/21/2004 [http://indiac.blogspot.com/2004_03_01_indiac_archive.html#107985061014070062] for tons of additional heavily-annotated news and commentary.
David said,
April 28, 2005 at 9:52 am
Hi Tim, thanks for the comment. I used the ‘violently’ word because, quite clearly, there were plenty of people on both sides who were ready to rumble. Were one side worse than the other? Perhaps, but it takes two to tango. If the composition of either group had been that of, for example, the 3-26 rally, then none of this would have happened. Of course I don’t mean that all TSU supporters are violent (or all NP members for that matter) - but I do believe the proportion of hotheads in those parties is much higher than in the more mainstream, and the parties themselves do not do as much as they should to reign in the more extreme behaviour.
Tim Maddog said,
April 29, 2005 at 2:02 am
David, I appreciate your polite reply. I have just posted on my blog more details about what I’ve learned in the past two days about Tuesday’s riots. Truth be told, to fight against the KMT-gangster coalition, I think the pan-greens need to be a bit *more* aggressive — at least philosophically speaking. They’re constantly shouted down by people like Lee Ching-hwa, and they just cower.
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