1212 All-Day Protest Against Land Expropriation Act Amendment Takes the Stage
1212 was a very chaotic day, a very candid day, and also a very moving day.
On this day, we saw the flames of struggle on the streets of Taipei, saw the incompetence of officials amending the law, and above all saw farmers standing guard in the cold wind for their homes.
Early on 1212, the Taiwan Rural Front (TRF) held a press conference outside the Legislative Yuan, accusing the government of amending the law behind closed doors and monitoring the negotiations between the two parties. TRF's Professor Tsai Pei-hui explained the civil-society version of the six insistences, expressing that the amendment of the Land Expropriation Act must be controlled at the source and that all compensation schemes must be properly prepared, making it a sound and complete amendment.
At the scene, not many people came. Chairman Liu Ching-chang of the Defend Rural Villages alliance became the representative of the countryside and could not but come; for the sake of land expropriation, he had truly lost count of how many times he had been to Taipei. Even more endearing was Wanbao's Hung Hsiang, who came to Taipei early in the morning to lend support. She said that Wanbao had been helped by others and must be grateful for a lifetime, so after Wanbao's case was passed and withdrawn, she began helping other rural villages.
In addition, at the Taipei Port expropriation zone, which was taking to the streets for the first time, a photo of a centenarian caught everyone's attention. Because the expropriation case was imminent, the century-old state was tormenting a centenarian, leaving the elderly with no place to rest in their final years. The family of the 100-year-old great-grandmother said that once expropriation and division of property occurred, they would simply have no money to buy a new house, and in the end it would be 70-year-old children leading a centenarian onto the streets. Hearing this made one's heart ache. This country really has gone bad! Such human misery was actually allowed to happen.
At the end, several farmers smashed a black box on the ground, revealing ballots and banknotes inside, a veiled satire of the calculations between political parties, preparing to end the morning press conference. The originally small press conference was meant to warm up the evening rally, explaining the demands while waiting for the evening gathering. But news came from inside the Legislative Yuan: with Interior Minister Jiang Yi-huah present participating in the two parties' caucus negotiations on the amendment, the Kuomintang legislators took a hard line, the Democratic Progressive Party had only Legislator Tien Chiu-chin fighting alone, and many provisions were about to be finalized. The situation was extremely critical.
The rural youth and farmers who had originally been preparing to pack up and leave became furious upon hearing this and began shouting continuously outside the Legislative Yuan. With only a dozen or so people left at the scene, they took turns speaking while the others followed with slogans. Very few people used the maximum volume to call out the Kuomintang legislators participating in the negotiations, including Jiang Yi-hsiung and Chao Li-yun, urging them to think of the farmers. Rural youth Cheng An-chi shouted that Minister Jiang Yi-huah must hold fast to scholarly principles and not teach one thing in the classroom while doing another as an official.
More than ten people shouted until they were hoarse. Worried that the sound was not loud enough, the rural youth placed a megaphone on the fence; too tired to keep holding it up, they simply hung their whole body on the railing.
Hung Hsiang, pained to see the rural youth shouting themselves powerless, stood alone at the Legislative Yuan gate like Meng Jiangnu weeping down the Great Wall, clutching a microphone and screaming loudly at the legislators inside. She kept talking and talking until she was too angry for words, and finally demanded to know what the legislators had grown up eating. A shout of "Steak!" from the crowd made the exhausted scene burst into laughter.
The shouting outside the gate had an effect: it not only forced the negotiating committee to change meeting rooms, but also prompted Jiang Yi-huah to invite TRF to a final round of negotiations at noon.
When the negotiations broke for lunch at noon, Legislator Tien Chiu-chin came out to explain, saying the scope of amendments was not large and that the Kuomintang was merely creating the appearance of negotiation before the vote. Hearing this, TRF hoped that even more people would come in the evening, using the power of the people to make the government turn around.
Faced with Minister Jiang Yi-huah's invitation to a final negotiation, TRF discussed internally. Some felt that since the government was unwilling to amend the key disputed points, there was no need to participate at all; others felt they should first fight for the scope of amendments and seek justice for the rest on the streets.
At 1 p.m., with Liu Ching-chang of the Defend Rural Villages Alliance and TRF's Tsai Pei-hui, Chan Shun-kuei, and Chen Ping-hsuan participating, it was decided that Legislator Tien Chiu-chin would lead the talks, with TRF insisting on the six demands and striving for a final chance at amendment.
In the Legislative Yuan meeting room, several people sat around a round table. Minister Jiang Yi-huah picked out the parts that might be amended, Legislator Tien Chiu-chin requested the direction of revisions, and TRF seized opportunities on the side to push the direction of the amendment. On compensation, it was revised so that in addition to caring for low- and middle-income households, those left homeless because of expropriation must also be cared for, with living resettlement and living subsidies provided; and in the expropriation review committee, it was agreed to include more than one-half civil-society scholars. On many compensation provisions, Jiang Yi-huah's attitude was soft, agreeing to amendments one by one.
However, on the major disputes, when TRF proposed incorporating the six insistences into the amendment, Jiang Yi-huah said he could not accept all of them and that some declaratory spirit could be placed into the implementing rules still to be amended. When discussing the expropriation of designated agricultural zones, TRF proposed excluding major construction from expropriating designated agricultural zones, but Jiang Yi-huah expressed that this was no longer something his level could decide and was unwilling to exclude such expropriation. TRF then demanded that expropriation must hold legally accountable hearings, but Jiang Yi-huah refused on the grounds of insufficient manpower. Hearing this, TRF lawyer Chan Shun-kuei was furious and told Jiang Yi-huah bluntly that the people's rights could not be restricted simply because of insufficient manpower.
Throughout the entire negotiation, the Kuomintang's Jiang Yi-hsiung came in, dropped the line "You can't just listen to everyone else's opinions," and walked off. On the Democratic Progressive Party side, only Legislator Tien Chiu-chin held up the DPP version proposed in June, constantly striving for the greatest scope of negotiation. TRF timely raised the six insistences to test the government's bottom line and understand where the problems lay. In the end, only minor revisions to some provisions were reached. The TRF representatives present had already seen that the bottom line for amending the law lay in the attitude of the Presidential Office and the Executive Yuan, and that what the Ministry of the Interior could revise was limited.
By the time the negotiation meeting ended, it was already 4 p.m. TRF's Tsai Pei-hui immediately rushed to the Ketagalan Boulevard scene to wait for the evening rally to begin. Because the event had only been decided to be launched three days earlier, the various expropriation zones had not strongly mobilized. After discovering at noon how serious the situation was and that the Kuomintang was determined to force a vote, emergency mobilization began, hoping more people would come.
After 5 p.m., farmers from various expropriation zones arrived one after another. In the farthest expropriation zones such as Taichung's Baoshan, as soon as people heard Taipei was in emergency, some who had originally been unable to come put down their work and got on the tour bus. From Hsinchu and Miaoli, even more drove and took buses all the way here. Many elderly people had not even eaten; as soon as they sat down on plastic stools, they hunched their bodies and endured the cold wind, fully determined to fight it out. One farmer said, our home is almost gone, why fear the cold?
Even more moving was Professor Hsu Shih-jung, who had been traveling abroad for lectures. As soon as he got off the plane, he dragged his suitcase to the scene, put on TRF's red T-shirt, and went onstage with full firepower. He angrily denounced how, in visiting many countries over expropriation, he found that Germany and many other countries regarded expropriation as the last resort they were most unwilling to use, while only Taiwan's government used it rashly.
Hsu Shih-jung's teacher, Yen Ai-ching, who had served for many years on the expropriation review committee, saw her student, and her student's students, and even more farmers and young people continuing to resist. Casting aside the bearing of an academic elder, she took the stage, recounted in detail the human-rights jurisprudence of expropriation, and explained how, inside the expropriation committee, she had fought alone for farmers' rights and how heartbroken she had been over the years.
In recent years the number of expropriation cases had reached more than a thousand. TRF held anti-expropriation rallies, and more and more expropriation zones joined in; even taking the stage had to be merged among several areas, with each area given limited speaking time, because the popular grievance was too deep. For the Taoyuan MRT A7 special zone expropriation, the chair of the self-rescue association did not dare say much, telling instead the story of her child longing for his hometown and her anxiety about expropriation: "The government must leave rural youth a door they can find to come home!" The audience fell silent, and everyone was grieving.
Professor Liao Pen-chuan of National Taipei University took the stage and encouraged everyone to rally. He said everyone's efforts had not been in vain, having forced the government to also shout about land justice, but it was a false shout, and moreover it used a fake amendment to carry out a real harvest. He encouraged farmers to keep fighting: if they could not win this legislative session, then change the government, change the legislature, and keep fighting.
Lawyer Chan Shun-kuei, who had participated in the final negotiation that afternoon, was also so angry that he abandoned his usual mildness and took the stage to denounce the government's expansion of power. Under the final say of the Presidential Office and the Executive Yuan, the entire bill had long had a bottom line: provisions that hindered financial conglomerates from acquiring land for development would not be amended by even one article, nor let go by even one article. He called for making public any legislator who did not stand for farmers, so they would have to face farmers' votes and electoral punishment back in their districts.
All key members of Wanbao's anti-expropriation movement were present, and they had also spent a long time making many signs. Chen Hsing-hsiung, chair of the Wanbao self-rescue association, encouraged everyone to keep fighting. Fighting did not guarantee victory, but not fighting meant the government and financial conglomerates would take the whole bowl. He said that although Wanbao had passed, it did not mean there was no crisis; they would still stand with everyone and fight until the expropriation law was properly amended.
At 10 p.m., the rally ended as people tore up paper symbolizing the Executive Yuan version of the draft and angrily threw it into the sky. Lin Tzu-ling, in the role of congressional monitor, had accompanied Legislator Tien Chiu-chin throughout the final negotiation. After the rally ended, she dragged her exhausted body back to the scene to recount the results of the final negotiation. She said that until the evening, article-by-article revisions were carried out, and in the end only Tien Chiu-chin was still fighting. The only additional concession won was that once major construction involved major disputes, a hearing could be held; everything else remained a solid block. And on the morning of the 13th, provisions the two parties could not negotiate would go directly to a vote, with the Kuomintang determined to pass the Executive Yuan version of the amended draft.
As Lin Tzu-ling explained, many rural youths began to sob, grieving that years of effort could not turn things around. But many understood in their hearts, having long known that the government would carry out iron-blooded expropriation and had long disregarded farmers' bitterness. Beside her, Professor Tsai Pei-hui wore no expression: on the one hand, she had long known the result; on the other, from 9 a.m. outside the Legislative Yuan shouting, through an afternoon of final negotiation, and then having to host the whole evening event, she was so tired that her face had long lost all expression. She said, go home! Tomorrow morning we still have to fight! In the future we still have to fight!
The Presidential Office had long turned off its lights! High officials all slept peacefully, leaving behind the aftermath of a square full of angry people. Farmers and youth would come again, each rally stronger than the last, each time angrier than the last, until the breaking point, when all unjust things would be completely overturned.
"Our government has gone bad!" I will always remember the tone of Dapu's Yeh Hsiu-tao's scream. How shocking it was, how heartbreaking.
A busy day, and also a historic day. There was still 12/13, and in the future there will be another rally, fighting all the way to a beautiful endpoint!
(This article is simultaneously published at Piao Lang. Island)
Further Reading
Land Expropriation Amendment Faces Final Battle Today; Farmers Take to Ketagalan Boulevard for the Third Time
1212 The Final Battle Moment - The Devouring Empire Resisting Land Expropriation
Land Expropriation Amendment (1) Farmers Take to Ketagalan Boulevard on the 12th to Monitor the Amendment
Land Expropriation Amendment (2) The Civil-Society Version's Six Insistences Against Excessive Expropriation