Ma Blames DPP Chair For Violent Protests

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Ma blames DPP chair for violent protests

TAIPEI, Taiwan — President Ma Ying-jeou yesterday blamed Democratic Progressive Party Chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen for recent violent anti-China demonstrations, but the opposition camp demanded him apologize for using excessive force to disperse protesters.

Ma said Tsai must be held fully responsible for the bloody clashes between police and demonstrators she had mobilized to the streets of Taipei to protest the visit by China’s top envoy Chen Yunlin.

He said Tsai had promised that the demonstrations would proceed in peace, but she failed to do it.

But Tsai claimed none of the participants in the demonstrations she had organized were present at the violent clashes taking place Thursday night outside the Taipei Grand Hotel, where Chen was staying.

DPP spokesman Cheng Wen-tsang expressed regret over the Thursday clashes, but demanded Ma and the security bodies apologize for dispersing the protesters by force, which he claimed provoked the violence.

A few hundred protesters battled police guarding the hotel late Thursday night. They attacked police with stones and in some cases with petrol bombs.

Police later dispersed the mob with force, ending the protest that lasted till the early hours of yesterday.

The violent scenes capped several days of anti-Chen demonstrations since the China envoy arrived in Taiwan Monday for economic talks.

But the DPP accused Ma of selling out Taiwan’s sovereignty by kowtowing to China in return for economic gains.

Tsai, who earlier this year took over the reins of a party that had just lost the presidency and become a minnow in parliament, has vowed to return the DPP to its old tactics — street demonstrations.

In the 1990s, the DPP frequently staged massive demonstrations, successfully heaping pressure on the government to accelerate democratic reform.

I don’t know whether it is wise to do so, the president Ma said, referring to the DPP leader’s vows of more demonstrations to come as her choice of a road she knows little about, and a thing she is not good at doing.

She has seen some unexpected consequences, Ma said of Thursday’s violence.

Ma defended the tight police protection for Chen, judging from all the threats that the DPP camp had made, such as pelting the China envoy with eggs.

Tsai yesterday went to the National Taiwan University Hospital to visit DPP legislators, protesters and police who were receiving treatments for injuries they sustained in the Thursday clashes.

She said she had led away all the supporters who had taken part in the demonstrations she had organized before the violence erupted.

She said her party would not rule out the possibility that among the rioting protesters there were some with special motives — an insinuation that government undercover personnel might have incited the violence to let the DPP take the blame.

The DPP chief also dismissed some critics who called her Violent Little Ing, saying the name was way over the top.