Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Nine years have passed since March 30, 2014, when half a million people gathered on Taipei’s Ketagalan Boulevard to protest against the Cross-Strait Agreement on Trade in Services. While originally intended to express concern about the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government throwing Taiwan’s door wide open to China, the rally also voiced widespread disapproval of police’s bloody dispersal of protesters occupying part of the Executive Yuan, which had happened one week earlier, in the early hours of March 24.

Unfortunately, then-premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺), then-president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and other government officials who instigated the police deployment have never been called to account, and neither have the police officers who acted violently, but who, according to the police, “could not be identified.”

President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday afternoon left Taiwan on a 10-day trip to Central America that includes stopovers in New York and Los Angeles.

“Through this visit, I will express my gratitude to diplomatic partners for their support of Taiwan,” Tsai said at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport shortly before boarding the plane.

The trip to Guatemala and Belize — her first overseas journey since the COVID-19 pandemic began sweeping around the world in early 2020 — aims to “demonstrate Taiwan’s determination to deepen exchanges” with its Central American allies, she said.