Learning Democracy Lessons

An interesting article about the police violence and what politicians think about it: http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2008/11/11/2003428280

Some funny statements:

Liao and Wang denied police had deliberately confiscated Republic of China (ROC) flags.
“It had nothing to do with the flag — it had more to do with whether the people were standing in a restricted area or what they were trying to do,” Wang said.

Mhm, that means that all the international observers and all the media around the world were lying to us. Thanks Mr. Wang for finally telling the world the truth!

“The Police Duties Enforcement Law [警察職權行使法] stipulates that when executing an order, police officers should take the measure that causes the least damage to people’s legal rights,” Chiu said.

They way I thought it should be is that the police should NOT CAUSE ANY DAMAGE to people’s legal rights, but instead DEFEND peoples rights.



People blame now the president, the directors of police, or security bureau to be responsible, but is this really true? Are they really the root of all evil?

Someone might ask why did all this police officers follow the commands, if it seems to be clear that actions were against the laws or even against the constitution?
It should be the responsibility of any police officer in a democracy to check if a command is legal and appropriate to the situation! If not, he has to deny the command and get all possible support by superior commanders for this decision.
But: Do they know what democracy is? Do they know about the constitution? Do they know about freedom of speech?
Do they learn how to defend the constitution and the human rights or do they learn how to follow commands?

It is not enough to call for a new assembly and parade law. Nothing will really change. The way people in the government and the police think has to change. And this can only be done by changing the way policeman are educated and trained.

Maybe even the education in school has to be changed. How many hours are spent in a Taiwanese high school per semester on learning about democracy, human rights, the constitution in Taiwan in comparison to other countries constitutions, the political systems in different countries in the world, the political parties in Taiwan and their history, organization and election campaigns, … ???
I am talking about learning and discussing things, not about remembering facts for some examination to be graded. This issue will be examined and graded in life.

If you read the article, you know this people got good grades in school but did not learn their lesson.