JULY 31, 2015 4:17 AM July 31, 2015 4:17 am
Demonstrators at the Education Ministry in Taipei, Taiwan, protesting textbook revisions.
Hundreds of students converged on Taiwan’s Ministry of Education and briefly entered the grounds of the legislature in continuing protests over proposed changes to high school history textbooks.
On Thursday, the protesters accused the ministry of improperly pushing through changes that put undue emphasis on China’s links with Taiwan and of rejecting students’ calls to focus on Taiwan’s own history.
The protest movement has been shaken by the death Thursday of one of its leaders, Lin Kuan-hua, 20, in what the police said was suicide by charcoal fumes. Mr. Lin had been one of the protesters who entered the Ministry of Education offices on July 23 and was facing the possibility of criminal charges for the act, a student protest group said in a written statement Thursday.
“The students’ efforts have led to the Education Ministry pursuing a legal complaint, and now an innocent student has unexpectedly killed himself, leaving us unceasingly saddened,” they wrote.
On Thursday, the protesters held a memorial for Mr. Lin and demanded that the minister of education, Wu Se-hwa, resign. At one point some students entered the nearby building of the Legislative Yuan, holding a sign that called on Mr. Wu to “stop the false concern” and step down.
Mr. Wu expressed sadness for Mr. Lin’s death and the Ministry of Education said it was still investigating reports that Mr. Lin killed himself after being upset by a meeting the day before with education officials.
The protesters remained overnight outside the ministry.
“If you want me to step down right away, then it seems like there’s no point in us having a dialogue,” Mr. Wu said while briefly meeting with the protesters Friday afternoon, Taiwan’s Central News Agency reported.
The textbook protests have some similarities with the Sunflower Movement last year, when student-led demonstrators occupied Taiwan’s legislature for 23 days to protest efforts by Taiwan’s governing party, the Kuomintang, to push through a service trade pact with China. That bill has since stalled, and the Kuomintang suffered heavy defeats in local elections last fall.
The Kuomintang nominee for president, Hung Hsiu-chu, trails Tsai Ing-wen of the Democratic Progressive Party in opinion polls. Political analysts say the Kuomintang is likely to lose the presidency and possibly its control of Taiwan’s legislature to the D.P.P. in elections in January.
President Ma Ying-jeou’s efforts to push for closer relations with China have raised voters’ concerns that Taiwan’s sovereignty would be undermined by its large neighbor. China considers self-governed Taiwan to be a part of its territory that must eventually be united with the mainland, and it has not renounced the use of force to achieve this.
