Human Rights Day series activities on Liberty Square, Taipei

11st Dec. 19:00 A review on one-month-old Wild Strawberries

12nd Dec. 14:00 Taipei Local Court: to support A girl who were pushed by THREE policemen that her arm was broken. Please gather on Liberty Square with some NGOs first and then go to support the friend and investigate the court.

12nd Dec. 19:00 Forum on the new Version of Parade and Assembly law purposed by Administration Yuan

Wild Strawberries are still here; if you could, please keep watching on us and caring about the current human rights situation in Taiwan and the world!

Support and Advice to Wild Strawberries

Hello Wild Strawberries,

First of all, I want to congratulate you guys on a successful march on Sunday. It just goes to show what people power can accomplish when it is organized and peaceful. However, I was disturbed by an article I read in the Taipei Times today that said KMT officials went to Washington D.C. and denied that police had stopped protesters from waving Republic of China flags or that they closed down the record store that was playing patriotic Taiwanese music. Hopefully NGOs such as Freedom House and Heritage Foundation will remain incredulous about the KMT's version of things, but I think the Strawberries can help counteract the KMT misinformation campaign. If any of you personally know someone who had an ROC flag taken from them, why not have them write letters to the Heritage Foundation and US Congress, giving their first-hand account of what actually took place? Of course, the more people involved the better. I personally saw a flag taken from a women on Taiwanese television and am willing to testify on what I saw.

I think it also would be a good idea for Taiwanese abroad to act in solidarity with the Wild Strawberries in Taiwan in order to help the movement make a greater international impact. I live in Taiwan now, but am from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where there are universities such as Carnegie Mellon, Pitt, and Duquesne and many Taiwanese both teach and take classes at these institutions. There are of course many more Taiwanese on the west coast of the US, in New York City, and all throughout Europe as well. I know it would not be easy to organize abroad, but it would be worth the effort, since not many people seem to know what is going on in Taiwan right now, or they may be getting their information from unreliable sources-- like Ma's stooges.

In Solidarity,

Scott Beck
Taipei, Taiwan

[NTDTV] Student Protest Continues in Taiwan

Mon, Dec 2008, 08:20:00

WONG:
And in Taiwan a student movement known as the wild strawberries are calling on Taiwanese president Ma Ying-jeou to apologize for alleged police brutality. The country's police force clamped down on demonstrators during last month's visit by Chinese Communist Party official Chen Yunlin. NTD's Ben Hedges brings us there. (more)

Wikipedia pages need some refreshment

Some important wiki pages are a bit outdated and need a review and better linking with related wiki pages:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Taiwan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Strawberry_student_movement

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiang_Kai-shek_Memorial_Hall

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_Square_(Taipei)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Lily_student_movement

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Police_Agency_(Taiwan)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_China#Politics

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma_Ying-jeou

Why is there no link to the English wikipedia page?

http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%87%8E%E8%8D%89%E8%8E%93%E9%81%8B%E5%8B%95

[Radio Taiwan International] Looks as if Mr. Ma tries to work on his damaged image in the world

Ma urges legislature to ratify human rights treaties

President Ma Ying-jeou attended the Asian Human Rights Awards on Wednesday, World Human Rights Day. Speaking at the ceremony, he urged the Legislature to sign off on international human rights agreements Taiwan first signed in the sixties. (more)

President supports changes to detention act

President Ma Ying-jeou said Wednesday that he supports better treatment for criminal suspects awaiting trial. Currently, those held in detention prior to their trials are treated no differently to those convicted of crimes. (more)

Taiwanese Press on 1207 March of still fighting Wild Strawberries

... including some wrong reports that the protests ended:

[China Post] Students end sit-in with demonstration

TAIPEI, Taiwan -- College students demanding the right to hold public demonstrations without restrictions decided to end their month-long sit-in after staging a march in Taipei yesterday.

With supporters and sympathizers joining their ranks, the students marched on the boulevard that link the Anti-Corruption Plaza, the Legislative Yuan, and the Executive Yuan (Cabinet) in the capital to protest the regulations that they say limit people's constitutional right to demonstrate freely. ...

[Taipei Times] Wild Strawberry protest stays peaceful

EVERYBODY STAY CALM: The student protesters and supporters applauded police officers for only issuing warnings and not blocking them or clashing with them
By Flora Wang and Loa Iok-sin
STAFF REPORTERS
Monday, Dec 08, 2008, Page 1

The Wild Strawberry Student Movement marked its one-month anniversary in Taipei yesterday with a rally featuring a mock funeral for the nation’s human rights, attracting several thousand participants of all ages. The demonstrators, who only reported their planned event to the police instead of seeking approval from law enforcement authorities as required by the Assembly and Parade Law (集會遊行法), peacefully marched to the Legislative Yuan, the Control Yuan, the Executive Yuan, the National Police Agency (NPA) and Ketagalan Boulevard in front of the Presidential Office. ...

[Taipei Times] REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK: Wild Strawberries protest proves the skeptics wrong

Many people may have had reservations about whether the loosely-knit Wild Strawberry Student Movement would be capable of staging a successful and peaceful rally as planned when they heard that the students had decided not to report their planned protest to the police in defiance of the Assembly and Parade Law (集會遊行法). Even Ho Tung-hung (何東洪), an associate professor of psychology at Fu Jen Catholic University and a participant in the Wild Lily Student Movement (野百合學運) of the 1990s, expressed reservations when talking to the Taipei Times several days prior to Sunday’s demonstration.

Ho, who had been offering advice to the Wild Strawberries as a student movement veteran, had expressed doubts about whether the students would be able to handle such a large-scale rally. ...


[Tawan News] Taiwan’s Wild Strawberry Movement ends with a peaceful rally

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – On the one-month anniversary, Wild Strawberry Movement had assembled protesters all over the island to stage a demonstration in Taipei Sunday, protesting the “death of human rights” to Ma Ying-jeou government. Since the previous application for right of way was overruled, it is feared that clash may erupt between students and police officers. Fortunately, the four-hour rally came to an end in peace, with students expressing their gratitude to the police for the peaceful result. ...

[Taiwan News] Thousands turn out for Wild Strawberries demo in Taiwan

About 3,000 Taiwanese college students marched in the capital yesterday to protest a law that they say limits people's constitutional right to demonstrate freely.

The students, many in black shirts symbolizing impaired human rights, shouted slogans as they paraded in a downtown district with police and government buildings. ...

Human Rights in the Taiwanese Press

[Taiwan News] Social groups release documentary testifying Taiwan’s backward human rights

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – Social groups Taiwan Society and Friends of Taiwan released a documentary “Red Marshall Law” yesterday on the eve of International Human Rights Day and of the 29-year anniversary of Formosa Incident, criticizing Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) government’s downgrading Taiwan and harming human rights. ...

[Taiwan News] Taiwan PTS protests press freedom interfered by lawmakers

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – Public Television Service (PTS) Board Director Cheng Tung-liao (鄭同僚) and President Sylvia Feng (馮賢賢) among other top executives yesterday placed a statement on Chinese-language newspapers to protest the Legislative Yuan’s resolution that TV stations under the Taiwan Broadcasting System should ask for the consent of governing authorities before using each item of next year’s budget. The statement said that lawmakers had moved Taiwan’s freedom of press and democracy backward and breached the consensus of withdrawal from media of political party and the military. ...


[Taipei Times] TAHR slams Ma over rights abuses

TOP 10 VIOLATIONS: The rights association said that instead of exporting Taiwanese democracy to China, the government has imported Chinese repression
By Jenny W. Hsu
STAFF REPORTER
Wednesday, Dec 10, 2008, Page 1

The suppression by police of protests during last month's visit by a Chinese official topped this year's top 10 human rights violations, the Taiwan Association for Human Rights (TAHR) said yesterday, urging the government to stop sabotaging the nation's hard won democracy by promptly amending the Assembly and Parade Law (集會遊行法). ...

[Taipei Times] All the president's men reject 'police brutality'

In an effort to improve his reputation abroad, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) sent a legislator, a police bureaucrat and a justice ministry official to Washington on Monday to argue that recent charges of Taiwanese police brutality were a “misunderstanding.”

After making a 90-minute presentation at the Heritage Foundation — a conservative think tank — the team moved on to the US Congress to distribute a statement denying that police were anything other than victims in the protests against Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait Chairman Chen Yunlin's (陳雲林) visit last month. ...

[Taipei Times] Documentary on brutality during Chen visit released

A pro-independence organization yesterday released a documentary recounting how the police used excessive force to block people from expressing their opinions and protesting during the visit of Chinese envoy Chen Yunlin (陳雲林), and said the documentary would be delivered to several international human rights organizations in the hope they would pay more attention to Taiwan’s human rights situation.
“By producing the documentary, we hope to draw the attention of international society [to the fact] that human rights in Taiwan have been seriously violated and democracy has been jeopardized during President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration,” Secretary-General of the Taiwan Society Lo Chih-cheng (羅致政) told a press conference yesterday. ...

[Taipei Times] Human rights advocates air concerns

DEJA VU: Threats to civil liberties and freedom of the press as well as pretrial detentions of opposition figures have led some to feel they are back in the Martial Law era
By Ko Shu-ling
STAFF REPORTER
Wednesday, Dec 10, 2008, Page 3

On Dec. 10, 1948, the UN General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Sixty years later, Taiwan prides itself on its peaceful democratization. However, many human rights and media watchdogs, both local and international, have expressed concerns over an increase in human rights violations and restrictions on civil liberties since President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) took office in May. ...

[Human Rights Day] Taiwan Foundation for Democracy honors Sima Samar

The Taiwan Foundation for Democracy (TFD) will today honor Sima Samar, chairwoman of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, with its 2008 Asia Democracy and Human Rights Award for her dedication to improving the status of women in Afghanistan.

(...Full Story...)

“Young people in Taiwan or in Afghanistan or in any other parts of the world are the owners of this world, the futures of this world. They have to be more respect for human rights and human dignity so they will be more responsible for a peaceful future for this planet,” she said.

Hey, Wild Strawberries are still fighting!

Today(1209) when I was on the Liberty Square, there was a man who ran to me and asked if the movement is going to end. There were several reports in the Mass media told people that Wild Strawberries Movement was ended after the peaceful and successful march on 7th Dec. However, this information is not true.

We are still here!

The No Borders Human Rights concert (1209 evening on Liberty Square, Taipei) was successful. Human rights activities from Nepal, Afghanistan, Hong-Kong were presented and addressed the current human rights situation in their own countries. The music played by foreigners friends who care about human rights in Taiwan was energetic and cheerful delivering the message of Love, Peace and Freedom to the world. People ignited candles on a no-border-line world map on those places where the participants are from and those places need the human rights. No border is what we expect to be realised with regards to freedom, peace and love. These are the value all human beings share and what we need to protect and fight for.

Wild Strawberries are still there. We are not the juicy pink strawberries on the cake, but the wild one which can endure time and challenging. It had been more than 800 hours passed. We are still here and there. We have already been in the history and in people's mind. And we are growing and spreading.

If you could, please keep watching this innovative and hopeful student movement by students in Taiwan. And if you could, you are welcome to give advice that what we should do to wake the deaf government up. You may put comment here, or you can send commentary to taiwanstudentmovement2008@gmail.com

[The Huffington Post] Wild Strawberries: Taiwanese Student Movement Stirs Anew

Taipei, Taiwan - A defiant, peaceful march by 5,000 protesters to the grounds of the Presidential Palace yesterday marked the first month's anniversary of a renewed and re-invigorated national pro-democracy student movement.

The protesters, some wearing mocking costumes of former emperors and current mainland Chinese Communist officials, demanded that the current Taiwanese government of President Ma Ying-jeou abolish a law that requires protesters to see and obtain prior permission for all public protests. They made their point by merely notifying local officials of the march but not waiting for approval.

Along the route they were briefly warned and stopped by Taiwanese security officials but without incident. The march was punctuated with a mock funeral for human rights, just two days before celebration of International Human Rights Day.(Read More)