Latest Parade & Assembly Law developments

One of Taiwan's most controversial and misunderstood laws is the Assembly and Parade Law (集會遊行法) [full text at link]. Debate over how to revise the law has been an active topic for years, and this year will be no exception. Taiwan News reports (if you don't read the rest of this long post, this report is really the more important part):

The opposition Democratic Progressive Party occupied the dais at the Legislative Yuan in a protest against proposed government amendments to the Assembly and Parade Act Friday....

The DPP said the changes didn't go far enough, and amounted to a throwback to the martial law era which ended in 1987. Carrying banners reading "Police State," a group of DPP lawmakers mounted the speaker's dais and prevented further hearings from taking place Friday morning....

The KMT version of the amendments would require the approval of a protest march from each shop, apartment building or office building on the route, DPP chief whip Ker Chien-ming told reporters. Even after the protest organizers had reported their plans to the authorities, police could still order them to change the route, downsize the protest location and change the time, Ker said.

DPP lawmaker Kuan Bi-ling said the KMT wanted to force through the law Friday so it could be used against an anti-government labor protest on May 1 and a DPP march against President Ma Ying-jeou's policies planned for May 17.

Because the protest prevented the Legislative Yuan from passing scheduled tax changes leading to a price cut for rice wine, a common ingredient of local food, the two parties also accused each other of holding up legislation beneficial to the public at large.
If the KMT really cared about the price of rice wine, then it would have used its majority to schedule the passage of the tax cut ahead of the Assembly and Parade Act, Kuan said.

Another crappy provision of the proposed law is the ability to issue repeated large fines for a number of different technicalities, which coudl all happen for what is basically a signle parade incident.

It's always best to do a quick historic overview of the law's creation and application. The very beginning?

The act was first adopted in 1988 after martial law was lifted in 1987, its intended goal being to avoid social upheaval in the post-Martial Law era, while also protecting the public's right to hold rallies.

The act has long been criticized by activists as legislation that restricts freedom of expression rather than protecting it. It requires organizers of demonstrations to apply for an assembly and parade permit before a demonstration takes place, grants the police the power to disband a demonstration if they find it necessary and forbids any demonstrations in certain areas surrounding government buildings and foreign diplomatic missions.

The DPP made revision of the law a primary goal during it's time in executive power,^[1] but was unable to push through any serious revision. But nothing much really happened. Instead, the debate largely lay dormant until 2006, during the "Red Shirt" siege of the presidential palace led by former DPP chairman Shih Ming-teh. Shih's final siege, in which the crowd refused to disperse even long after the protest had officially ended, finally got him charged with violating the law (though nothing else in the month long protest got him in trouble). Thankfully, Shih and the 15 other defendants were ultimately vindicated in February of this year:

Prosecutors said that the anti-Chen campaign organizers had not applied for a permit from the Taipei City Police Department to hold a parade or rally, as required by the Assembly and Parade Act.

The Taipei District Court yesterday said in a ruling that although the police had put up warning signs and broadcast requests to the organizers for the crowd to disperse, it was unlikely that so many thousands of protesters could respond to the requests, and therefore under the “principle of proportionality” it could not prove that the organizers violated the Assembly and Parade Act.

The ruling also said that evidence failed to prove that the 16 defendants were in charge of the massive protest.

It said that because the government and the legislature had proposed amendments to the Assembly and Parade Act that would abolish the requirement that protest organizers apply for permits from the police, the act remained in question.

But Shih's camp were not the only ones protesting the law at that time, just the ones with the largest media megaphone:

The [Taiwan Association for Human Rights] and 20 other civic groups recently formed an alliance to push for an amendment to what they called a "bad" law.

Huang Te-pei (黃德北), a professor in the department of social development at Shih Hsin University, said that "police discretion" should be described more specifically in the law as this has largely been abused by the police in recent years.

"Last May, our labor union was protesting in front of the headquarters of Chunghwa Telecom. It was a legal action, but the police tried to disperse us," said Simon Chang (張緒中), president of Chunghwa Telecom's Workers' Union.

Or consider this protest, also from 2006:

On May 13, Yang Wei-chung (楊偉中) plodded through a crowd of livid students. The front doors of the Ministry of Education were barely visible behind a shifting flank of riot police and an iron gate. Yang stuck his foot in the gate's grill, intending to climb over the barrier. That's when police yanked him down and arrested him in front of an army of TV cameras.

"I've participated in many raucous protests -- in the KMT [Chinese Nationalist Party] era, no less -- but that was the first time I had such a run-in with the cops," Yang said.

During and after Shih's protests, may KMT & DPP legislators alike called for amending the law to relax the standards and give the police more power. The PFP also got into the act:

Legislator Chang Hsien-yao (張顯耀), director of the PFP's policy research center, told reporters that Article 14 of the Constitution stipulates that "The people shall have freedom of assembly and association."

However, the Assembly and Parade Law requires organizers of an assembly or parade to apply for permits in advance to the local police chief, who may find it difficult to resist political pressure from higher authorities to deny the application, Chang said.

President Chen himself risked arrest in a "U.N. for Taiwan" torch rally in late 2007, during the run up to the legislative election, because the city and national governments couldn't agree whether the parade required a permit or not (Taipei City was probably inclined to deny it, and the central government insisted it was not a political event anyway).

After Chen Yun Lin's visit to Taiwan and the resulting protests, along with the police suppression of those protests, revision of that law became a central priority of the Wild Strawberry's protest movement in 2008:

The third change we want is that at present violations of the Assembly and Parade Law are criminal acts under the law and determined under criminal law, so you can be sent to jail for a year or two years, for example. We believe that this is against the freedom of the people. We want that changed so that violations fall under the administrative laws and only fines are handed out for violations of the Assembly and Parade Law, so you won't get a year or two for violations of the law. Finally, we want them to lift the restrictions on places where assemblies and parades can be held. These restrictions are a violation of the basic rights and freedoms laid out in the Constitution.

Some called for the outright abolition of the law. Eventually, minor progress was made on trying to relax the law:

Activists have called for a change from a pre-approval system to a pre-notice system, the abolition of the police’s power to disband demonstrations and a cut-down version or the complete abolition of the restricted areas.

Although both Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators, as well as the Cabinet, support the pre-notice system, they argued on whether it should be mandatory or voluntary.The Cabinet version of the amendment insists that organizers be required to notify police of a upcoming demonstration, while DPP lawmakers, including Chiu Yi-ying (邱議瑩) and Chen Chieh-ju (陳節如), argued for a voluntary system....

The second dispute came when lawmakers discussed whether there should
be a “safe distance” around government buildings and foreign diplomatic
missions.

Today's proposed "revisions" of the law, as well as the KMT's intentionally placing a contentious issue in front of the kind of laws that would pass without protest, are good reminders of the KMT's political maneuvering and authoritarian roots. Once champions of true reform of the law, they have decided the current law is much more useful when you're in charge!

Let us hope the law is eventually reformed in a positive way that increases, rather than decreases, the freedom of the people.

Laundry list of sins

It can be hard to remember all the ways in which the KMT government under President Ma Ying-jeou has been pushing Taiwan back from the progress made during the DPP's last 8 years into darker times. So Wei-chen does us the favor of cataloging them, providing links to Chinese media as well. Here's a few of the choice ones:

• Changing the name of Taiwan Post back to Chunghwa Post
• Worshipping Chiang Ching-kuo [only a slight exaggeration of the government sponsored celebration a few weeks ago commemorating what would have been his 100th birthday]
• Changing the name of Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall back to Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall
• Having certain government officials dealing with China take a test on the Chinese constitution [as MT pointed out to me, this actually makes more sense than it sounds like]
• Seriously curtailing human rights during ARATS head Chen Yun-lin's visit to Taiwan
• Re-opening the mausoleum of Chiang Kai-shek.
  
• Reintroducing the serviceman's doctrine.
• Reintroducing a song at the Army's military academy which includes the line, "the [KMT] party flag waves"
• Reintroducing the military song "I love China"
  
• The Taipei City government specifically doing checks on the book sof pro-Green businesses
• Asking departments to check on what male civil servants wear when on duty to make sure it is appropriate (really necessary?)
• The MOI asking the CNA to alter its reporting to be more China- and Ma-friendly
• Reintroducting student formations in the Double Ten parade
• Putting military instructors in middle and elementary schools and re-expanding their roles
• The police breaking up legal private assemblies

... and a few other curtailings on freedom of speech and reintroduction of martial-law era practices.

And now, the government wants to erase the past about the white terror. Not to mention the party property issue I talked about yesterday.

So how much of this questionable report was accurate, in the end?

Roundup

A number of things worth rounding up from the last few days. It's been a busy month at work so I don't have time for too many comments, but check these out:

Sunday

The probe that warrants probing

Questions on why the police came to my home

Monday

COA criticized over response to H5N2

PRC touts US$19 billion financing for Taiwan firms (ruh roh!)

Ma repeats ‘region-to-region’ comment

ROC flag’s removal from NCKU forum sparks controversy

Depressing

Police chiefs who were in charge of the heavy-handed units in Taipei during Chen Yunlin's visit? All recently promoted.

Breaking

"The Control Yuan will begin an investigation on NPA director-general Wang Cho-chiun, NSB chief Tsai Tsao-ming and sec-gen Su Chi to see if they've committed administrative wrongdoing when handling demonstrations during Chen Yunlin's visit. The investigation may run from 3 months to 6 months. If they're found guilty, they'll be impeached. Huang Huang-hsiung (黃煌雄) will be in charge of the investigation. He's a former legislator affiliated with the DPP, who seems to be quite insisting on "DPP's founding principles" (and thus has been keeping a distance with the Chen Shui-bian administration towards the end of Chen's term)." -- Loa Iok-sin, Taipei Times reporter.

Roundup, 11/20

Liberty Times reports that the Culture Ministry, which helped print a large number of CDs carrying Song of Taiwan 《台灣之歌》, claims that all of the current copies have been sold out and no more can come to market (it's been selling like crazy since the Chen Yunlin visit and the incident surrounding the song at a music store).

Problem is, a source inside the Ministry told Liberty Times there's at least 5,000 copies left in stock.

Ma’s approval rating cut in half since coming to power (Taipei Times)

Taisugar chairman Wu abruptly resigns position (Taipei Times)

Wu’s abrupt departure was reportedly triggered by pressure from Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) Chairman Chiang Pin-kung’s (江丙坤) desire to install his nephew Chen Ching-bin (陳清彬) as company president.

Ma's photo removed from APEC website (Taipei Times)

Ma on Tuesday acknowledged the organizer of this year’s APEC summit for using his photograph and referring to him as “president” on the Web site and official documents, saying it indicated his more conciliatory cross-strait policies were working.

It marked the first time that the country’s president was introduced in an APEC document and the first time since Taiwan became an APEC member economy in 1991 that a host country published a picture of a Taiwanese president on the Web site.

Ma’s photograph and other information, however, were later removed from the Web site. Critics suspected China of interfering in the matter.

It's a rose god damn it!

After the KMT held their open forum caucus meeting on amending the parade law (good article in Taipei Times here), where most heavyweights basically agreed to change things only in name and not in form, and where all the NGOs were KMT shrills that nobody has ever heard of before, we were expecting some cosmetic changes to the law without any change in substance.

And that's what we're getting (hat tip Rank MT):

The Executive Yuan has raised the issue of revisions to the Assembly and Parade Law recently. However, the new version adopts a “compulsory notification system” whose content preserves restrictions including “assembling without notification is illegal”, “establishing forbidden areas”, “police have the right to alter the time, place, and form of the parade”, “the [police] can command dissolution of the parade without explicit standards”, and “the criminal and administrative sanctions relating to assembly”. Namely, the revision contains no practical improvements, only the change of name from “permission” to “notification”.

Police pressuring journalists

Wow.

The Association of Taiwan Journalists (ATJ) demanded yesterday that the National Police Agency (NPA) stop pressuring photojournalists to help find potential suspects in the rallies that ensued during a controversial visit made by Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait Chairman Chen Yun-lin (陳雲林) earlier this month.

“The police have put the reporters in grave danger by demanding that they rat on their interviewees,” ATJ president Leon Chuang (莊豐嘉) said.

“Such requests disparage the reporters’ right to work safely,” he said.

The ATJ said many photojournalists had filed complaints saying that the police have sought their help in identifying suspects who allegedly took part in the violence.

When the reporters refused to provide the pictures, the police went directly to heads of the news outlets to pressure the reporters into giving up the photos, ATJ said...

The police yesterday said the accusation was groundless, arguing that it is customary for the police to solicit the media’s help in gathering evidence.

Taipei City Policy Bureau media contact Wang Wen-shen (王文伸) shrugged off the accusation saying: “Do you really think the police have enough power to force reporters to do anything?”

Immigrants' rights takes step forward

The Premier is announcing plans to abolish the requirement for foreign brides and grooms of showing NT$420,000 in the bank before they could get permanent residence. All right!

... tails this time.

I posted yesterday on the rhetorical overboard we're now seeing from the Green side as everyone rushes to defend those arrested, especially President Chen. Now for the other side of the coin.

As pretty much everyone in the blogosphere has pointed out recently, the problem isn't that Chen is going to be prosecuted on corruption-related charges. I believe at the end of the day, the trial will be transparent and the evidence should be able to speak for itself.

• Complete lack of due process, with many of the people rounded up being held incommunicado and without charges, including President Chen himself. Chen was in fact being held the night before the prosecutors even had the court approve holding him incommunicado. This is really the most important of all; due process is too vital to be shoved aside in so many cases.
  
• The unevenness of investigations and arrests. It's not just that those arrested have all been higher-level greens; it's that even those blues who are already proven guilty aren't being put in jail, while there's also apparently no investigations going on for Blue country administrators (when we all know they're in one of the best positions to take bribes).
• The "trial by media" occuring as prosecutors and the government leak information to the press, as well as the denial of any possible political motive (Ma himself called his prosecution political back in the day, and is denying that now as well as saying Chen is 'irresponsible' for making such statements).

Going overboard

I am not pleased to see organizations like the Taiwan Society saying we're back in the White Terror period. It's complete hyperbole. Just like labeling every world leader you don't like "the next Hitler," calling a handful of very questionable detentions a return to the White Terror-- or likening the confiscation of flags to martial law-- quickly undermines the truly terrific scale of those events. This is no better than a few years ago when the Pan-blue camp was labeling all sorts of DPP actions as "a Green Terror."

Reminder: In the White Terror, spies for the government were everywhere. You could disappear for speaking your mind to a neighbor. Publications like the Liberty Times would be closed and their editorial board in jail. Executions were common, and the leadership would often arbitrarily increase the severity of a court sentence. The law meant nothing at all. The party dominated everything in life, and joining the KMT was key to moving up in almost any field. The army was the KMT's army (國民黨黨軍). Things are not the same now.

That is not to say I think the detention of these people or confiscation of flags is "no big deal."

Secondly: As Michael Turton points out, the fact that Chen is certainly guilty of at least some crimes does not change the fact that this could be a politically motivated prosecution. But the DPP has somehow managed to get wholly sucked into this. A few weeks ago, everyone in the party was doing their best to ignore him. Now Chen has successfully manipulated more than a few DPP media attention whores into making this cause célèbre into a cause de croisade.

Pop quiz

Did you know... the Assembly and Parade Law still forbids holding protests that promote Communism or Taiwanese Independence?

Fact Check on KMT claim: "DPP repeatedly killed Parade & Assembly Law amendment efforts"

My memory fails me on this one, but I wouldn't be surprised if this claim is true, since the DPP was not too thrilled about the unprecedented 24-hour Oust A-bian protests. The law is draconian and hasn't been amended since 2002, with the previous revision 10 years earlier (the law was originally passed in 1988.

But I thought the best way to test it is to go through the record and do some fact checking. What we want to do is check the 6th Legislative Yuan's record (pre-2008 legislative elections), which will let us know just what happened to these bills. Although there was some discussion on the topic before the Oust A-bian movement, no one cared that much.

During the entire 6th Legislative Yuan, there were a total of four proposed amendments to the parade and assembly law. All were raised between September 2006 and December 2006. The first two were KMT led efforts; the third a DPP/TSU sponsored bill; and the last was a PFP initiative. For simplicities sake, we will refer to them in chronological order as the first, second, third and fourth proposals (actually the opposite of how the picture above displays them).

The first proposal passed first reading and was sent on to the Internal Administrative Committee (內政委員會) and the Ethnic Affairs Committee (民族委員會). It hasn't moved since. The third proposal was sent to and has been stuck in the same committees as the first.

The second proposal was eventually sent back to the Procedural Committee (程序委員會), where it died. The fourth proposal, like the second, found itself sent back to the Procedural Committee.

So now we only need to find out what happened to the first and third proposal. And we find that it was promptly ignored by both sides. There appears to be no attempt by either party during the remainder of the 6th LY or early part of the 7th to review either the DPP or KMT verisons.

[Of course, there is very little oversight of these committee meetings (no video recordings available), so it's difficult to judge the accuracy of this statement. But searches through news in 2006, when you include the committee name, don't show up much; if you look for key words that indicate one party tries to block discussion of legislation (like 杯葛 or 封殺), you get even less, and certainly nothing relevant.]

Most surprisingly in light of KMT claims, it appears the KMT legislators made a promise to make this bill their first priority in the 7th Legislative Yuan if they won power; since they've taken the super majority, the bill has just fallen off their radar.

Further, the DPP would have to stop the committee meeting all together with fights, since the KMT still had control of the committies and their review of legislation.

Conclusion: KMT claims that the DPP killed the amendments to the Assembly And Parade Law are flat out lies, but the DPP also made no greater effort than the KMT to push through amendments.

This reinforces recent student efforts to keep their movement non-partisan, because it goes to show you really can't trust either party to do the right thing on this issue without enough pressure.

Prediction

The KMT will amend the Assembly and Parade Law, but not relaxing it as they promised to before the election; instead they'll tighten it.

Bold prediction, but do you think they'll try it?

Also, Maddog linked me to the following from Taipei Times:

The high speed rail station in Taipei was not able to open for service all day yesterday. Trains were only allowed to operate between Banciao (板橋) and Tsoying (左營).

[...] a thorough investigation would be conducted later.

Coincidence?

... and arbitrary restriction of movement.

Live update from Taipei source: ALL buses bound for Taipei from other places will be banned from the freeway tomorrow. The move is aimed at blocking DPP mobilization efforts. While there's no news on cars, I expect arbitrary ID checks of drivers coming into the city.

Correction/update: I have yet to find any confirmation of this news which came to me by phone from a reliable source, but he was hearing it second hand too, and so far it hasn't checked out. I don't want to be alarmist, and sorry for potentially misleading. But it did sound worth publishing right away when I heard it.

Update: Janice has commented with a clip that seems to confirm the general plan for restriction, but not the details (buses aren't being told they can't come up). Instead (video), it appears police plan on stopping buses on their way up to Taipei to find reasons to detain some people, turn them around or at least cause significant delays. The source of the info is a DPP legislator, and that Kaohsiung County officials have refused to catch people on their end. Thanks Janice!!!!!!!

Update: Chthonic band lead vocalist Freddy wore a T-shirt with "Taiwanese" written on it; he was said to be wearing a "strange outfit" by the police. He walked on Zhangshan N Rd where Chen Yunlin was having dinner with Lien Chan with a coffee in hand. Of course he didn't just happen to be there, but he wasn't doing anything else other than walking and shopping.But the police stopped him telling him to go away.

And another person was asked to give up his Tibetan flag as the police said it's a "lethal weapon."

More reports on undeclared martial law

Follow ups on the very scary incidents I reported yesterday. Nothing in English on the music store incident yet, I think, but here's a Liberty Times article. For the filmmaker, see the Taipei Times here:

The Association of Taiwan Journalists, which on Monday accused the government of restricting press freedom, yesterday lashed out again after one of its members was taken into police custody outside the Grand Hotel.

“I went to the Grand Hotel to visit a friend in the morning, after passing through two police checkpoints on the way with no problem,” said the independent documentary filmmaker, who asked to be identified only as “Miss Chen.”

After staying with her friend for around two hours, Miss Chen encountered a convoy of vehicles as she left the hotel.

“I suppose it was Chen Yunlin leaving the hotel — I’m not sure,” she said. “As a filmmaker, I always carry my video recorder with me, so I taped some footage.”

After the convoy had left, police officers surrounded her and asked to see her national ID card and the video she had recorded, she said.

She refused, but police continued to ask her to show her ID. They told her to turn off the video camera and tried to grab it from her, Miss Chen said.

“They told me that it was a restricted area and I could not videotape in the area — but no one told me so at the two police checkpoints on the road leading to the hotel, and there were many tourists taking pictures or videotaping,” Miss Chen told a news conference.

After her firm refusal to show her ID, the police forced her into a police car and took her to a nearby police station.

The police only allowed Miss Chen to leave when DPP Taipei City Councilor Chien Yu-yen (簡余晏) showed up.

And one I didn't hear about:

At least two verbal and physical clashes have occurred between local journalists and law enforcement personnel safeguarding Chen and other members of the ARATS delegation since they arrived on Monday.

Cheng Chieh-wen (鄭傑文), a photojournalist affiliated with the Central News Agency (CNA), was dragged away by national security agents at the Grand Hotel on Sunday while he was standing within the designated press area.

Yesterday, reporters engaged in verbal disputes with security officers over press areas that had been changed without prior notice.

“The ATJ strongly condemns security personnel for violently dragging and pushing reporters, and demands that the government explain such incidents and apologize to the CNA journalist,” the statement said.