I read on the paper that the NY police had arrested over 700 protestors participating in the “occupy Wall Street” demonstration for illegally marching on the Brooklyn Bridge US such as Washington , LA , Chicago
In August, 2006, Taiwan had a demonstration called “Million Voices Against Corruption, President Chen Must Go,” 百萬人民反貪腐倒扁運動(bai3 wan4 ren2 min2 fan3 tan fu3 dao3 bian3 yun4 dong4). Called by 施明德(shi ming2 de2), the 25-year-and-a half-year political prisoner under Chang Kai-Shek regime and former leader of DPP, 1.3 million people donated 100 NT dollars (somewhere around 3.5 US dollars) in ten days to support this demonstration requesting President Chen Shui-Bian, who is now in custody for his corruption and money laundry cases, to step down from his post.
In 2000, Chen beat the other two major pan-blue opponents and was elected President of the ROC with 39.3% of votes, ending the KMT regime since 1949 when Chang Kai-Shek retreated to Taiwan and completing so-called the first party alternation 政黨輪替(zheng4 dang3 lun2 ti4) in Taiwan. People were thrilled and considered the regime a big white hope for Taiwan
However, people in Taiwan
After writing to President Chen to ask him to resign and getting no response, Shi announced to start the demonstration on Aug, 12, 2006. From Sep, 9th, some ninety thousand people (based on the statistics of the Taipei City Police) started a 24/7 sit in on 紅杉軍(hong2 shan jun), the red shirt protesters.
Ketagalan Boulevard, the plaza in front of the Presidential Building. The demonstrators all dressed themselves in red and called themselves
Ketagalan Boulevard, the plaza in front of the Presidential Building. The demonstrators all dressed themselves in red and called themselves
(big5.china.com.cn)
The sit-in continued for over two months until the headquarters announced to “retreat” to the red shirt protester office on Nov, 29, 2006. Three big marches surrounding the Presidential Building with hundreds of thousands of participants had taken place during the period. (For the one on 9-15, there were over 360 thousand participants according to Wikipedia.)
Seeing from the purpose, you can’t call this demonstration a success because Chen stayed in his post until he finished his second term. Ironically this demonstration ended in inner frictions of the core leaders and doubts for the unclear details of the accounts.
But there’s more than one angle to see this movement. Personally I won’t call it a failure. Unlike the previous riots we see in history that were started by hungry farmers or angry mobs, this biggest-ever demonstration was triggered mostly by the middle class of the society. With such a huge crowd of people on the street for so long, it had been proceeded in order and peace without any lives claimed. The society as a whole has shown to the successors their impatience and intolerance towards corruption.
And later I read on the paper that during the demonstration, concerned with the turmoil, the first lady Wu decided to transfer a huge amount of money to a secret account at a bank in Swiss, which caused the attention of the authority concerned and lead to the investigation of the money laundry and the series of corruption cases, and hence the indictment and custody of Chen. You can never tell the potential “butterfly effects” of a demonstration.
A few weeks ago I watched a documentary on HBO concerning how the high ranking administrators of the banks had taken the bail-out money they got from the Obama government as their bonus; how some representatives of people had cashed in by abusing their power. It’s really hard not to get angry when you see how taxpayers’ money has been wasted like that, and how some people just can’t feed themselves even when they’ve been trying very hard.
When the middle class gets angry, they might be able to do a lot.
百萬人民反貪腐倒扁運動=百万人民反贪腐倒扁运动
政黨輪替=政党轮替
紅杉軍=红杉军
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