Taipei, Taiwan – A missile hit the capital of Taiwan and caused devastation in a peaceful park.
Moments earlier, pedestrians walked along the paved streets lined with brick and stone buildings with sloping roofs that dot this mountainous location.
Now torn limbs lie scattered across the blood-soaked rocks, and everywhere the dying and injured writhe on the ground, screaming in pain, calling for help.
Soon, shaken rescuers come to their aid, trying to locate those most seriously affected, stopping the bleeding from the wounds and transporting people to a safe place.
It resembles a war zone, but it is not.
The blood and limbs are fake, the injured are uninjured actors, and the rescuers are interns.
The scene is a simulation organized in late January by a civil defense group, Kuma Academy.
The exercise lasted eight hours and also included training personnel on how to respond to air defense alarms, use the surrounding terrain for cover and avoid detection by enemy forces.
“In today’s large-scale exercise, we are simulating real-life scenarios to allow our students to have hands-on experience,” explains Chen Ying, instructor at Kuma Academy.
One hundred and twenty participants participated, all with basic training in first aid and disaster response.
One of the participants says he initially signed up to understand what the situation would be like in the event of a disaster or war scenario. “If something like this happens, it means you have to be prepared,” he said. it says.
“You will be better able to deal with it emotionally and mentally.”
Kuma Academy has grown rapidly in recent years and now offers a wide variety of courses and exercises covering topics ranging from cyberattacks and misinformation to cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and injury assessment.
The organization is part of a broader grassroots movement of Taiwanese civil defense groups that have emerged across the island in recent years and have seen a flood of civilians sign up for training.
Classes are mainly about non-violent forms of civil preparedness.
“We leave the fighting to the Taiwanese military,” activist and Kuma Academy co-founder Ho Cheng-Hui told Al Jazeera during one of the organization’s training sessions.
Nonviolent training takes countless forms. Some organizations, such as Kuma Academy, organize large-scale, realistic training exercises with more than 100 participants at a time. Smaller local groups have turned civil defense into a matter of bringing people together to do physical training at a local community center.
Classes are being offered on topics such as tying knots, administering first aid, keeping a stock of emergency supplies, preparing a carry bag, and making a tourniquet. Others focus on civil defense in the virtual domain, teaching participants how to combat online manipulation campaigns and distinguish fact-based information online from false and misinformation.
According to assistant professor Fang-Yu Chen of the Department of Political Science at Soochow University in Taipei, all civil defense preparations are happening due to concerns about China.
“Taiwanese are worried that China will take aggressive action against Taiwan,” he says.
Since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in power in Beijing has considered self-governing Taiwan (officially the Republic of China) an inseparable part of China itself.
In 2022, Chinese President Xi Jinping said he would not rule out using force to bring the island under CCP control.
A survey conducted by the Pew Research Center last year showed that 66% of Taiwan’s population consider Beijing’s power is a great threat to Taiwan. Almost 83 percent to believe The threat from China has increased in recent years, according to a 2023 survey by Academia Sinica in Taiwan.
Their fears appear to be well founded. On Thursday, China began two days of joint military exercises involving the army, navy, air force and rocket force in the waters and airspace around Taiwan. The Chinese military has framed the joint exercises as a form of deterrence against Taiwanese “separatists” and “external forces.”
According to US intelligence, Xi has instructed the military to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027, according to press reports.
Kuma Academy co-founder Ho says he, like others around him, is deeply concerned about future Chinese actions against Taiwan.
“I discovered that many Taiwanese civilians shared my concern, but did not know what to do or where to go with that concern,” Ho told Al Jazeera at one of the Kuma Academy training courses in Taipei. That’s why he co-founded Kuma Academy in 2021.
But the growth of civil defense groups like the Kuma Academy has not been embraced by everyone in Taiwan. Some raise concerns that the groups are endangering the island by further antagonizing China. Others see the new organizations as a symptom of a state-controlled civil defense structure and accuse the government of doing too little to reinforce and expand the existing system.
Ho sees that the state of civil defense in Taiwan is far from perfect, but said at least more people are learning how to save lives from groups like his.
“We want to teach civilians how they can protect themselves and each other, so that if war comes, everyone is prepared.”
This story originally appeared on Aljazeera.com read the full story
