Chinese media warn of repercussions from Sarkozy meeting with Dalai Lama

AP, BEIJING
Tuesday, Dec 09, 2008, Page 1

China piled criticism yesterday on French President Nicolas Sarkozy for meeting with the Dalai Lama, with a newspaper calling him “arrogant” a day after Beijing summoned the French ambassador to protest the meeting.

Sarkozy met the Dalai Lama on Saturday privately in Gdansk, Poland, during celebrations marking the 25th anniversary of former Polish president Lech Walesa's Nobel Peace Prize. The Dalai Lama has also received the prize. Sarkozy earlier played down the furor, saying: “There's no need to dramatize things.”

China demanded Sarkozy cancel the meeting several times and called off a major China-EU summit earlier this month in protest.

“For whatever the consequences of his stunt will be, the arrogant French president has only himself to blame. He asked for it,” the editorial in the China Daily newspaper said.

It added the meeting “calls into question all his previous efforts to repair ties and his personal credibility as well.”

It said the government may still need to buy Airbus planes, but Chinese travelers may decide to avoid Paris.

“Nor can it make consumers buy from brand names they feel bad about, be it Louis Vuitton or Carrefour,” it said.

On Sunday, Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister He Yafei (何亞非) summoned the French ambassador to China to say the meeting was “a rude intervention in Chinese internal affairs and has hurt the feelings of Chinese people gravely.”

In Paris, French Junior Minister for Human Rights Rama Yade said on Sunday that it wasn't worth turning the tensions into a “psychodrama.”

“I don't see what there is to debate about,” she said on France's RTL radio, noting that other world leaders have also met the Dalai Lama.

The 1989 Nobel Peace Prize winner has met in recent months with US President George W. Bush, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Wild Strawberries protest proves the skeptics wrong
　

By Flora Wang
STAFF REPORTER
Tuesday, Dec 09, 2008, Page 3

Many people may have had reservations about whether the loosely-knit Wild Strawberry Student Movement would be capable of staging a successful and peaceful rally as planned when they heard that the students had decided not to report their planned protest to the police in defiance of the Assembly and Parade Law (集會遊行法).

Even Ho Tung-hung (何東洪), an associate professor of psychology at Fu Jen Catholic University and a participant in the Wild Lily Student Movement (野百合學運) of the 1990s, expressed reservations when talking to the Taipei Times several days prior to Sunday’s demonstration.

Ho, who had been offering advice to the Wild Strawberries as a student movement veteran, had expressed doubts about whether the students would be able to handle such a large-scale rally.

Some people opposing the Wild Strawberries also left messages on the students’ official Web blog (tion1106.blogspot.com), alleging that violence and chaos could break out during the rally.

But the students’ peaceful 2.7km march to the nation’s major government branches on Sunday and the large number of participants the parade attracted proved the skeptics wrong.

The Wild Strawberries were able to maintain order with a team of students tasked with keeping the peace. They had been trained by several non-governmental organizations experienced in staging rallies.

Although they seemed inexperienced, the team helped control traffic and the pace of the parade as the protesters marched down Zhongshan S Road, Zhongxiao E Road and Ketagalan Boulevard, which are among the busiest sections of downtown Taipei.

The civil disobedience training the students had received prior to the rally, given by Chien Hsi-chieh, director of the Peacetime Foundation of Taiwan, also proved successful, as the students resorted to applause and cheers instead of violence when stopped by police officers on several occasions.

The enthusiasm of the students appeared to have also ­infected ­hundreds of supporters of the movement who marched with them, even though some of the supporters were overheard saying that “the students’ action would not be as effective as throwing gasoline bombs, like we did in the old days.”

The police’s tacit agreement to allow the students to finish the rally also helped keep the demonstration nonviolent. An officer from the nearby Zhongzheng First Precinct was overheard saying that the police had decided not to block the students’ demonstration.

But the students still struggled to prevent other civic groups from stealing their thunder.

As the students were discouraging a group of elderly people from holding banners advocating de jure Taiwanese independence, one of the elderly protesters complained about the students’ interference.

“They are fighting for our freedom [of speech]. How can they limit our freedom?” the man said.

The students also spent quite some time persuading two participating vehicles to remove their political flags.

French priest called to minister in Taiwan
　

FEELING AT HOME: Francois Verny said he felt it important to learn Hoklo, which he began learning in Taichung so he could preach to the mostly farming community
　

By Meggie Lu
STAFF REPORTER
Tuesday, Dec 09, 2008, Page 4

“Would I ever consider going to a bigger city for a bigger crowd? No. I like [the] tranquility [here]. You see butterflies flutter and hear birds chirp.” — Pere Francois Verny

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The neighborhood deep in the countryside is filled with rice paddy after rice paddy, scattered intermittently with weathered, one-story brick homes that are still occupied.

The community is known for producing rice and guava, among other things. It is easy to notice that the age of people in the neighborhood fall in two extremes forming an “M” shape — either people are very young or quite old — as others are working in larger cities.

On a lazy Tuesday afternoon, a group of school children park their bicycles in front of a Catholic church after school, chattering as they head for the entrance. Follow them in and you are in a different world.

The building, the Cingliao Catholic Church (菁寮聖十字教堂), sports a cone-shaped, Western style roof, plated with aluminum and topped with a Holy Cross.

The church is a landmark in Houbi Township’s (後壁) Ting-an Village (頂安), as it was designed by renowned German architect and Pritzker Architecture Prize winner Gottfried Bohm, and built in 1960.

Under the windows embedded around the roof, through which you can see the sky, in the center of the church is a large incense burner in front of Jesus on the Cross; on the left is an ancestor plaque, and on the right a statue of the Holy Mary.

But perhaps what makes the church alive is French-native Pere (Father) Francois Verny (韋方濟), who lives in it, and who has been preaching to locals in Taiwanese (or Hoklo) for the past 18 years.

When asked what brought him to Taiwan, Verny said that he was answering a call from Jesus.

“I didn’t know a lot about Taiwan 18 years ago, other than having seen many inexpensive products stamped ‘Made in Taiwan,’ so my impression of the country was not that good,” Verny said.

At the time, Verny had been serving at a church in France for two years, he said.

“However, a priest had been working in Taiwan, and when my church asked us who would volunteer to go give him a helping hand, I was touched with a calling; the calling superseded my bad impression of Taiwan and told me to come — it was my first trip abroad,” he said.

Soon after coming to Taiwan, Verny said that he felt it was important to learn Taiwanese, adding that shortly after his arrival he began taking Taiwanese language lessons in Taichung to communicate to his congregation, who are mostly farmers.

“My mission in life is to serve Jesus and the church, I want to share my love for Jesus, a good friend of mine, with my good friends in Taiwan,” he said. “However, I could not tell people who Jesus was before I got to know my people first; I had to befriend them so that they would be interested in my friend Jesus.”

Asked whether this was one reason why his church had an incense burner, Verny said it was only partially correct.

“We have it there, but you cannot control how each person reacts to it, everyone has a different attitude,” he said. “[The incense burner is there because] you can worship with incense in Catholic churches, people do it in Europe too, just in a different way.”

The idea of holding incense does not conflict with Catholicism, Verny said, as, “the meaning behind holding incense to worship Jesus is to be near him, to be deeply connected to him ... The meaning is not just the gesture, but in the heart.”

With this acceptance, Verny offers Masses and Sunday school to locals each week, a group he said comprises about 20 people.

“Would I ever consider going to a bigger city for a bigger crowd? No. I like this place very much because of its tranquility. You see butterflies flutter and hear birds chirp,” he said.

“If I went to a city, people may not have time to listen to what I say because they live with stress and are preoccupied with living ... More and more city people are coming to my church, and I welcome them to find quiet and comfort here,” he said.

Two years ago, Verny was assigned to Belgium by his church to serve a mission, he said, adding, “I couldn’t get used to it. I left after six months to come back to Taiwan.”

“I now know that ‘Made in Taiwan’ is of the best quality, particularly the people here ... I am a ‘Made in France’ Taiwanese,” he said, adding that after 18 years and hundreds of Masses, he had developed a deep love for the island.

“When I first came, in addition to the calling, I viewed coming to Taiwan as a challenge — there is so much I wanted to communicate and share with people, and so many obstacles.”

Verny thinks that by preaching in rural Taiwan, he is getting a lot in return.

“Instead of teaching to the people, sometimes they teach me,” he said. “Shortly after arriving in Tainan, I was one day walking in the night market when I was approached by a man who asked me the difference between Catholicism and Christianity ... After a short while, he said, ‘You are fortunate to have a faith.”

“In Europe, they think that having a faith is normal, and they take it for granted. Not until the man told me did I realize how fortunate I was to have a faith,” he said.

Another lesson Verny said he learned was to let go of prejudice.

“I like the simplicity and pureness of Taiwanese. They are very direct, whereas some Europeans think too much and are opinionated,” he said.

“When you are in one country, you may think that you are better than people in other countries ... Putting down the prejudice had set me free,” he added.

As rural Taiwan is rapidly losing its young people to larger cities, people in the countryside are losing faith and hope, Verny said.

“I have moved to live inside the church in October to be close to [the people], whereas before I lived in a nearby town ... I want our sessions not to be a Father teaching, but a Brother sharing lessons in life,” Pere Verny said. “I want to encourage them and make them discover that they are wonderful, that they don’t need to have a lot to be great.”

　

Ma bows to China over Dalai Lama

Tuesday, Dec 09, 2008, Page 8

In response to the Dalai Lama’s suggestion that he visit Taiwan, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said last Wednesday that the timing was not appropriate.

Ma’s remarks have caused much debate. Even Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) suggested that Ma reconsider his decision. But Presidential Office Spokesman Wang Yu-chi (王郁琦) explained on Thursday that the decision was made out of concern for “overall national interests,” for which the timing was not right. It remains unclear which “nation” the president has in mind.

The Dalai Lama is not only Tibet’s spiritual leader, but also enjoys a great reputation in democratic countries. His determination to resist China’s authoritarian regime has become an asset in the fight for universal human rights. Over the past few years, he has visited the US several times and has been invited to the White House as a special guest of the US president. He has also visited Taiwan twice and both visits highlighted the values shared by Taiwan and democratic countries in the West. Undoubtedly, this was beneficial to our “overall national interests.”

Ma should be reminded of his own words. When China launched a crackdown in Tibet that coincided with Taiwan’s presidential election campaign earlier this year, Ma issued a statement in support of Tibetans and the Dalai Lama and called on the public to join him in condemning Beijing.

At the time, he urged the Chinese communists to stop their military crackdown and open a dialogue with the Dalai Lama. In an interview with the German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung in July, Ma said the Dalai Lama had visited Taiwan twice in his capacity as a religious leader and that they had met twice. Ma said Taiwan would welcome the Dalai Lama if he visited again as a religious leader. Comparing Ma’s previous comments with his new stance, it is clear he has gone back on his statement to please China.

When the Dalai Lama visits democratic countries in the West, China always issues “serious protests,” including threats or retaliatory measures. However, despite Beijing’s loud objections and threats to commercial interests, Western democracies choose to stand by democracy and human rights.

Ma, by contrast, has rejected the Dalai Lama’s visit to curry favor with Beijing in the name of “overall national interests.”

His habit of belittling himself shows that the self-proclaimed “valiant steed” is cowardly when it comes to dealing with Beijing.

Ma’s unwillingness to offend China is not surprising. Immediately after taking office, he said that cross-strait relations would be his top priority.

He also stressed to foreign media that Taiwan must maintain a good relationship with China. In reality, it is Ma himself who needs China’s help. He is hoping that China will promote the nation’s economic development so that he can run the country smoothly and be re-elected.

Promoting the myth that the nation’s economy depends on China, Ma has over the past six months pushed to relax restrictions on Taiwanese investment in China, thus locking Taiwan’s economy into China’s.

But, at the same time, Ma was not alert to the looming global financial crisis, and now the nation’s economy is troubled by both internal and external difficulties. Internally, companies are closing down because of the outflow of manufacturing plants and capital, which is fueling unemployment. Externally, the global financial tsunami has swept over Taiwan and pounded its already weakened economic structure.

As a result, Ma has failed to fulfill his campaign promises of 6 percent economic growth, an unemployment rate of less than 3 percent and a per capita income of US$30,000, along with a promise that the TAIEX would climb above 20,000 points.

Instead, employees are being forced to take leave with no pay and are facing pay cuts and layoffs. Their future looks dim.

With regard to the hardships faced by ordinary people, Ma says he feels their pain, but it seems he has no intention of righting his misguided policies.

He has not changed his strategy of encouraging industries to relocate to China. Encouraging them to return to Taiwan would promote domestic investment and create jobs. But Ma and his Cabinet propose measures such as consumer vouchers, tax cuts and various subsidies that create an illusion of prosperity based on “saving the economy through consumption.”

On the other hand, Ma is looking across the Taiwan Strait, hoping China will grant some favors to boost the economy. Under such circumstances, he would not dare offend Beijing by allowing the Dalai Lama to visit.

Ma has catered to China in almost every way — from belittling the nation’s sovereignty to suppressing protests against Chinese envoy Chen Yunlin (陳雲林).

Taking Beijing as his master, Ma is acting like the chief executive of a Chinese special administrative region, or the puppet king of a vassal state.

Taiwan has won much praise for its successful democratization over the past two decades. In the past six months, however, judicial and human rights and freedom of speech, assembly and protest have regressed, arousing concern from international human rights groups.

Ma has ruled out a visit from the Dalai Lama. This may give people in other countries the impression that Taiwan has downgraded itself to a part of authoritarian China.

The legislature, as the highest representative body, should give the situation serious attention.