Sing China protesters attacked by people from White Wolf's "Party"

Yum.

Last week I blogged on the despicable piece at The Diplomat lauding the greatness of drug smuggler, gangster, and assassin Chang An-lo, the famous White Wolf. Hardly were the pixels on that piece cooling when alleged thugs from his alleged party showed up at a protest against a Chinese TV show visiting Taiwan as part of United Front efforts to annex Taiwan, to allegedly beat up protesters. Recall what the Diplomat panegyric said:

At public events, Zhang is routinely followed and waited upon by a well-trained entourage; when encountering people on the street who may or may not recognize him immediately, Zhang is a perfect elderly gentleman, making way for others and treating women and children with particular courtesy.

The story of Chang's CUPP party associates attacking students broke on FB and Twitter right away. Taiwan News reports here, with vids. Despite the fact that the beatings were public and many people called the police, the police took over thirty minutes to show up, a fact which did not escape local politicians....

Wu said police have demonstrated divergent standards of law enforcement, as their response to the NTU incident was delayed, but very fast when students at Fu Jen Catholic University in New Taipei City’s Sinjhuang District (新莊) attempted to topple a statue of Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) on Feb. 28.

The delayed arrival of the police will be familiar to anyone who has attempted to get the police to respond to gang-involved incidents in Taiwan. The perps were quickly identified by social media searchers. The TT initially reported:

Three students were reportedly injured by a member of the pro-unification Patriot Association (愛國同心會), police said.

At the center of the furor was the school’s decision to rent the athletic field for the event, which was cosponsored by the Taipei Department of Cultural Affairs and the Chinese reality television show Sing! China.

Representatives of the school’s student council on Saturday said that the event had not only caused structural damage to the facilities, but also denied NTU students and sports teams use of the field and its track.

The festival is included in memorandums of understanding on cultural and arts events signed by Taipei and Shanghai, but posters for the event called the school “Taipei City Taiwan University (臺北市臺灣大學).”

Accusing China of using the concert as a “united front” tactic that infringed upon Taiwan’s interests, pro-Taiwan independence groups Free Taiwan Party and 908 Taiwan Republic Campaign first staged a protest outside the venue before purchasing tickets.

Attacking students is a really bad idea, young people protesting have a special status in any culture. The police responded also by announcing raids on gang-operated sex dens. Although these will only result in a few low level busts and perhaps round ups of scantily clad females, eagerly filmed by our fearless truth-to-power local media, the announcements will reduce the number of people visiting such places, hitting the gangs in their pocketbooks.

As for the United Front (the KMT-CCP alliance against Taiwan independence) accusation, that was borne out. Dr. Ketty Chen, Vice President of the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy, alerted her followers on Facebook to a piece at NewTalk which observed that the "Taiwanese" company operating the event was a shell actually owned by the Shanghai Taiwan Affairs Office. So the students were apparently absolutely right.

The pro-KMT China Times provided the best media moment. It reported on the concert as if it had occurred... and never reported that it had abruptly been canceled.
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Daily Links:

• Fossil piece from NYT 2008 says Taiwan independence movement likely to wane. LOL. I blogged on it years ago. Ma actually accelerated development of Taiwan identity, independence sentiment
• Brian H's coverage of Sing! China mess here.
• Tsai unveils overseas construction initiative worth 3.5B US.
• Tricky Taipei looks at the low birthrate
• Klaus B interviews a member of the KMT assets commission
• The oft-reported succession crisis among Taiwan's foundational CEOs is going to come to a head soon.
• Ed Royce presses on WHO inclusion
• Another round of DPP calls for constitutional reform

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