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Hundreds of university students
gather in Taipei to protest Next Media deal
By Chris Wang and J. Michael Cole / Staff reporters
Protesters, including members of
the Youth Alliance Against Media Monsters and other civic groups, demonstrate
outside the Legislative Yuan in Taipei yesterday against the Next Media Group
buyout deal.
Photo: Chang Chia-ming, Taipei Times
Police officers await the arrival
of hundreds of student protesters in front of the main gate of the legislature
in Taipei yesterday.
Photo: J. Michael Cole, Taipei Times
Hundreds of young Taiwanese from around
the nation yesterday continued to put pressure on the government to act against
media monopolization and reject the sale of the Next Media Group’s (壹傳媒集團)
Taiwanese businesses to two consortiums with a six-hour protest outside the
Joint Government Office Building, where officials from the Fair Trade Commission
(FTC) and academics were holding a public hearing on the sale.
Next Media Group signed an agreement on Tuesday to sell its four Taiwanese
businesses — the Chinese-language Apple Daily, Next Magazine, Sharp Daily and
Next TV — for NT$17.5 billion (US$600 million) to two consortiums comprised of Chinatrust Charity Foundation (中信慈善基金會) chairman Jeffrey Koo Jr (辜仲諒), Formosa
Plastics Group (台塑集團) chairman William Wong (王文淵), Want Want China Times Group
(旺旺中時集團) chairman Tsai Eng-meng (蔡衍明), Lung Yen Life Service Corp (龍巖集團)
chairman David Lee (李世聰) and Taiwan Fire & Marine Insurance Co (台灣產物保險) chairman
Steve Lee (李泰宏).
The sale has raised fears of a media monopoly and undue influence from China on
Taiwan’s media, in light of the investors’ major business operations across the
Taiwan Strait. Critics of Tsai, Taiwan’s wealthiest person, who made his fortune
in China, have accused him of interfering with editorial matters at his other
media outlets.
For some of the protesters, the journey to Taipei began as early as 3:30am
yesterday, as they boarded buses and headed for the capital to express their
concerns about the deal.
A large delegation from the south was welcomed by loud cheers as it joined other
participants outside the building, which was locked down under heavy security
and barbed wire.
Police officers asked for the ID of anyone seeking to enter the building.
In all, about 500 people, mostly university students, braved the damp weather as
the meeting began at 9am. According to the organizers, the participants came
from 36 universities nationwide.
Some had already taken part in two protests in front of the Executive Yuan
earlier this week organized by the student group Youth Alliance Against Media
Monsters, which also helped organize a much larger protest on Sept. 1 against
the planned acquisition by Tsai of the cable TV services operated by China
Network Systems (CNS, 中嘉網路).
In a display of fraternity, representatives from each academic institution were
invited up on stage to display banners or placards with the name of their school
inscribed on them and they were greeted by huge applause.
As student leaders and academics addressed the young crowd, it soon became clear
that few had high expectations that the FTC, along with the National
Communications Commission (NCC), the Investment Commission and the Financial
Supervisory Commission (FSC) — the agencies that are to review the acquisition —
would do a thorough job.
Alliance convener Lin Fei-fan (林飛帆) said the demonstrators were asking the FTC
to investigate the issue of horizontal and vertical media integration that would
be caused by the deal, and to hold a legally binding hearing so that the review
procedures would be transparent.
They are also demanding that the legislature enact an anti-media monopoly law as
soon as possible, Lin said.
“We will give the FTC two weeks to prepare for and hold a hearing, and we demand
that it reject the deal in a month,” Lin told the protesters.
Chen Wei-ting (陳為廷), one of the student leaders, said the students had two
serious concerns — that a media monopoly is taking shape while the government
remains clueless and fails to deal with the issue, and the growing influence of
China on Taiwanese media.
Representative from civic groups also voiced their concerns about the deal, with
Taiwan Democracy Watch saying in a statement that the government should do
whatever it takes to keep media outlets from falling into the hands of a select
few.
Leung Man-to (梁文韜), a political scientist at National Cheng Kung University who
supports the students’ cause, said the deal was neither a business nor a legal
issue, but a political issue.
Leung said he fears a “purple terror” is descending on Taiwan, in reference to
Beijing’s influence, because “when you mix red [which represents the Chinese
Communist Party] and blue [the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)], you get
purple.”
Several promising young film directors, including Yeh Tien-lun (葉天倫), Yang
Ya-che (楊雅) and Cheng Yu-chieh (鄭有傑) also showed up to express their support for
the students, as did Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators, led by Pan
Men-an (潘孟安), and People First Party (PFP) Legislator Thomas Lee (李桐豪).
In the afternoon, the demonstrators headed to the legislature, where they
continued their protest as about 100 police officers equipped with riot shields
looked on.
The legislative caucuses of the DPP, the Taiwan Solidarity Union and the PFP all
signed letters of commitment pledging to do their best to block the deal and to
work on an anti-media monopoly law.
The KMT caucus refused to attend the event and sign the letter, saying the
students’ protest was illegal.
Unhappy with the KMT’s response, the students marched to the front gate of the
legislature and asked the party to “come out and address the issue.”
Student organizers surprised everyone with what they described as a “call-out
tactic.” They telephoned KMT caucus whip Lin Hung-chih’s (林鴻池) office and played
the conversation on loudspeakers.
Li Shing-hong (李成康), a student leader in Hong Kong’s “anti-brainwash movement”
earlier this year telephoned Lin, but the person who answered the telephone said
that the caucus whip was in a meeting and could not take the call.
The students then folded the letters of commitment into paper planes and threw
them into the grounds of the legislature.
Before the protest ended at about 3pm, the students pledged to return to the
streets of the capital — possibly in front of the Presidential Office — if the
government “keeps playing dead” on the deal.
The DPP caucus said it would propose suspending the deal until anti-media
monopoly regulations are in place.
DPP headquarters reiterated the party’s opposition to the deal and pledged to
“take all possible and necessary action” to block the merger, party spokesperson
Lin Chun-hsien (林俊憲) said.
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