｜ Chapter 3 ｜ Protest: The Crucial 20 Days The Protesters Regrouped October 10, 1991: The National Day Military Parade. Photographer: Liu Chen-hsiang In the end, only the Independence Post, Taiwan Times, My People Daily, and the independent media Green Team steadfastly refused to leave. They were few in numbers, however, with just over 20 people including photographers. Outnumbered by the military police, they were quickly pushed away by force. 118 When they were pushed out the door, Independence Morning Post reporter Chen Ming-cheng suddenly called for everyone to sit down. He handed out spare writing paper, writing the words “Protest against media blackout” for the first row of reporters sitting in front of military police shields to hold up. At the scene, the commander of the military police constantly radioed back to his superiors, awaiting new commands. The reporters who stayed behind kept busy. They contacted their editors-in-chief with walkietalkies, loudly expressing their determination to defend the freedom of the press and their refusal to leave. In the end, the military police retreated, giving up on dispersing the media. The reporters returned to the Basic Medical Science Building. The police also gave up dispersing Lee Chen-yuan and the over 30 other protesters. However, the remaining reporters, Lee Chen-yuan, and others were kept from leaving the premises until the end of the military parade. Around 3 a.m., alliance members that were driven off by the police gradually made it to the second planned protest site, the entrance of NTU’s main campus, where they continued to gather and protest. To stop protesters who had been dispersed from approaching the military parade area again, the police expanded the scope of the lockdown, adding barricades and barbed wire fences on Xinsheng South Road and Roosevelt Road. The military parade was completed in form behind layers of barbed wire and under the guard of the military police, police, and intelligence officers. But instead of people cheering and rejoicing, government officials attending the event all looked cold and gloomy. The atmosphere was awkward and strange. This was the largest military parade ever in Taiwan’s history. In order to ensure it went on as planned, over 20 thousand military police officers were deployed, far more that the number of soldiers in the drill. Also, possibly out of fear that people from central and southern Taiwan would travel to Taipei to join the anti-military parade protest, all trains were prohibited from stopping at Taipei Main Station until the end of the military parade, setting a historical record since the government settled in Taiwan. Since then, there has never been another largescale parade of the armed forces on October 10 on Ketagalan Avenue. 119