SIP appeals again to detain Chen
　

By Jenny W. Hsu
STAFF REPORTER
Friday, Dec 26, 2008, Page 1

The Special Investigation Panel (SIP) of the Supreme Prosecutor’s Office yesterday submitted a second appeal to the Taiwan High Court to re-detain former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), arguing that Chen could attempt to flee or tamper with evidence by colluding with or threatening witnesses.

The 20-page appeal, which came exactly one week after the first appeal was rejected, was delivered in person by SIP Director Chen Yun-nan (陳雲南) at approximately 5:30pm yesterday to the Taipei District Court, then to be given to the High Court.

The prosecutors asked that the High Court rule on the appeal rather than referring it back to the District Court for another review, Chen said.

In its Dec. 13 ruling, the Taipei District Court ordered that Chen, who was detained on Nov. 12, be released without bail following his indictment along with 13 other people on charges of embezzlement, corruption and money-laundering.

After the SIP’s first appeal, the Taiwan High Court on Dec. 17 ordered the Taipei District Court to rehear its decision to free Chen.

On Dec. 18, the Taipei District Court rejected the appeal and upheld its earlier decision to free Chen without bail.

Chen and his wife Wu Shu-jen (吳淑珍) are accused of siphoning NT$104 million (US$3.12 million) from a special Presidential Office discretionary fund.

They are also charged with accepting NT$100 million in bribes, NT$200 million in connection with a land procurement deal and another NT$90.93 million in kickbacks to help a contractor win a tender for a government project.

In the indictment, the prosecutors asked the court to hand down the maximum penalty of life in prison if Chen is convicted.

Government urged to amend Immigration Act
　

By Loa Iok-sin
STAFF REPORTER
Friday, Dec 26, 2008, Page 3
　

Tibet supporters and human rights groups yesterday urged the government to amend the Immigration Act (出入國及移民法) and pass an asylum bill to grant legal status to Tibetans and other international refugees.

“The government said that it will issue temporary residency to the Tibetans [in the group on Liberty Square in Taipei], but it’s not the final solution to their problems as temporary residency does not allow them to work,” Taiwan Friends of Tibet vice-chairman Yang Chang-chen (楊長鎮) told a press conference at Liberty Square.

More than 100 Tibetans living in Taiwan without legal status have been staging a sit-in demonstration on the square since Sept. 9, pleading with the government to grant them asylum.

Many of them had made the dangerous crossing through the Himalayas into Nepal before coming to Taiwan on forged Nepalese or Indian passports.

After a meeting with Tibetan and human rights activists on Monday, the government said it would likely issue temporary residency permits to the Tibetans and help them find shelter so that they could at least live in the country legally.

The activists, however, don’t think the government has gone far enough.

“The Tibetan pandas enjoyed a high-profile warm welcome, while the Tibetan refugees were left aside — this is not good for Taiwan’s international image,” Yang said.

China’s Wolong National Nature Reserve, the major habitat for pandas, is in a part of Sichuan Province that was traditionally a Tibetan domain and was part of an independent Tibet before the Chinese invasion in 1959.

After the activists performed a short play to reenact segments of Tibetan history, some of the Tibetan protesters presented khatas — a traditional Tibetan scarf used to show welcome or respect to someone — to an activist wearing a panda costume to show that that they hoped to live happily together in Taiwan as they once did in Wolong.

“Our first choice is to have a refugee bill so that all international refugees could benefit from it,” Yang said.

“If not, we would settle for a revised Immigration Act that adds a special clause for the Tibetans here,” Yang said.

While the Democratic Progressive Party legislative caucus and some individual Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers have shown interest in helping the Tibetans, Yang said he hoped the issue could be resolved as soon as possible.

Wild Strawberries to sue the police
　

REPRESSION: The students planned to file a lawsuit against the police officers they claim injured them in the forceful confiscation of their ‘gift’ to the president

By Chen Hsuan-yu
STAFF REPORTER
Friday, Dec 26, 2008, Page 3

A group of students from the Wild Strawberry Student Movement who were stopped by police on Wednesday on their way to deliver “human rights presents” to President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said they decided to sue the officers for violating their freedom.

Minor clashes occurred as students attempted to prevent the officers from taking away their “installation art cabin,” which led to a number of students being injured. Police later confiscated the cabin.

The students said they would also sue the officers for “inflicting injuries on them and embezzling the cabin.”

The incident started when the students, wearing red Christmas hats, carried their cabin stuffed with Chapter Two of the Constitution — a chapter about citizen’s rights and obligations — the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and copies of the Assembly and Parade Act (集會遊行法), as their Christmas presents for Ma.

The students responsible for delivering the “presents” set off from the Nanchang Park and headed to the Presidential Office along Guling Street and Nanhai Road.

Police stopped them near Chongqing S Road, Sec. 2

The police ordered them to leave on the grounds that their rally constituted an illegal assembly. The students tried to persuade police that they were delivering “presents” to the Presidential Office. But the police continued to block them, adding that they were violating the law by blocking traffic during rush hour with the 2m cabin.

The students later sent several representatives to communicate with the Presidential Office, which agreed that the cabin could be delivered there during office hours yesterday. Minor clashes occurred, however, when police officers from the Zhongzheng Second Precinct forcefully removed the cabin.

In a related development, the Wild Strawberry Student Movement yesterday called on its participants to attend the memorial service of Liu Po-yen (劉柏煙), a former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) member who passed away last week after self-immolating in protest against Ma at the Liberty Square of the Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall last month.

The memorial will be held in Nantou on Jan. 3.

The death of de facto sovereignty
　

By Lin Cho-shui 林濁水
Friday, Dec 26, 2008, Page 8

Recently, two inconspicuous but contradictory news items appeared in the media.

Last month, the Ministry of National Defense changed the title of “military attache” for Taiwan’s military representative organization in Washington to “secretary.”

The second was a comment by Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrew Hsia (夏立言). In response to a question from a Democratic Progressive Party legislator, Hsia said the nation’s bid to join the WHO might succeed.

The former represents a failure for Taiwan’s international participation, while the latter suggests a diplomatic breakthrough. If we look at these items in tandem with a string of surprising cross-strait and diplomatic policies under President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), the government’s strategy to orientate Taiwanese identity as a quasi-client state of China becomes clear.

The title “military attache” can be used only when two countries have formal diplomatic ties. When Taiwan and the US severed diplomatic ties, China opposed Taiwan stationing a military attache in Washington, and it took Taiwan a lot of effort to convince the US to allow it to keep the posts. These posts and the diplomatic immunity given to US-based Taiwanese officials are symbolic remnants of Taiwan’s sovereignty.

Unexpectedly, military attaches have now been downgraded to secretaries. Although this conforms to Ma’s cross-strait diplomatic truce, the move has drawn severe criticism from both ruling and opposition parties.

As for the WHO bid, a majority of the public thinks it is just another irresponsible promise made by the government.

Taken together, these contradictory developments suggest a form of cooperation between the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in which Beijing holds the initiative.

Regardless of how the international situation changes, the fact is that Taiwan is a de facto independent, sovereign state, but rarely recognized as a de jure independent country. Neither Taiwan nor China can change this state of affairs, although neither senior members of the KMT nor Beijing accept this view. It was not until after 1990 that former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) adopted a more pragmatic diplomatic approach and recognized the concept of “one China, with each side having its own interpretation,” a standpoint strongly opposed by China.

Since then, China has not had a smooth ride in blocking Taiwan from taking part in international organizations. Taiwan has improved semi-official relations with other countries and has joined the WTO. As a result, since 2000, China has adopted a new strategy: oppose Taiwan’s de jure sovereignty while not denying de facto sovereignty.

Ever since the KMT deprived Lee of his party membership, the party has leaned toward the principle of “one China.” Through consultation and negotiations with the CCP, the KMT has effectively abandoned support for “one China, with each side having its own interpretation.”

From Ma’s perspective, China has emerged as a new political and economic power in the international community and will become the only supporter of Taiwan’s economy. It is impossible for Taiwan to pursue sovereignty, so the reasoning goes, but it won’t easily accept “one country, two systems.”

Therefore, Ma has defined Taiwan as a local Chinese government; advocated a diplomatic truce that does not accept dual recognition but removes Taiwan from national symbols; given up pursuit of a UN seat in a bid to secure membership in special UN agencies; cracked down on the display of national flags during Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait Chairman Chen Yunlin’s (陳雲林) visit to Taipei; and inked agreements allowing direct sea and air transportation links defined as “special routes,” even though they are regarded as domestic routes.

Now, after all this, the government has renamed its military attaches in the US to show that it is weakening military relations with Washington.

Big steps backward in the international, cross-strait and domestic arenas have inflicted considerable harm on the nation’s sovereignty.

Worse, the government is cooperating with a requirement in China’s “Anti-Secession” Law that Taiwan obtain approval from China before joining international organizations.

This is most obvious in the case of Taiwan’s bid to join the WHO. Taiwan is already a member of the WTO, an organization far more important than the WHO. The international community therefore did not necessarily side with China’s block on WHO participation.

Had former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) not raised his requirements for WHO membership, Taiwan would have been able to join the organization long before the transition of power. Instead, Chen passed the job to Ma, who is now asking China for permission to join the WHO. China is, of course, likely to exercise flexibility in regard to participation in order to advance its agenda of unification.

Ma’s cross-strait diplomatic strategy can be analyzed thus: Taiwan’s status is above Hong Kong’s because the former still enjoys autonomy and elects its own president and legislature. But its status is beneath that of Belarus and Ukraine under the Soviet Union because Taiwan cannot be a member of the UN. Its status is also lower than imperial China’s tributary states — Korea, for example — because Taiwan has less diplomatic freedom. Taiwan has abandoned not only its de jure, but also its de facto sovereignty.

Taiwan’s international status, as defined by the Ma administration, has more sovereignty than in “one country, two systems,” but a lot less than imperial client states. Taiwan has given up its claim of being an independent and sovereign state; it is now a quasi-client state.

Under this definition, it is not surprising that Taiwan would ask for Chinese approval to join the WHO or downgrade its US-based military attaches.

The question is if the Taiwanese public is prepared to accept this state of affairs without complaint.

Lin Cho-shui is a former Democratic Progressive Party legislator.

A curious Chinese definition of ‘partner’
　

By Paul Lin 林保華
Friday, Dec 26, 2008, Page 8

Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Wu Poh-hsiung (吳伯雄) recently visited Japan. According to reports, he managed to allay concerns among Japanese officials that Taiwan is moving closer to China at the expense of relations with Japan. Japanese politicians also demonstrated support for Taiwan becoming an observer at the World Health Assembly (WHA).

Wu felt he “accomplished everything that President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) told me to do.”

Just what did Ma tell Wu to do? If all Ma told Wu to accomplish was to get support for Taiwan to become an observer at the WHA, then he did not really achieve much. Japan would have given its support even if Wu hadn’t gone there.

However, if Ma wanted Wu to dispel concerns about Taiwan’s relationship with China at the expense of Japan, it is still too early to tell if he succeeded.

Wu’s most interesting comment was that he had conveyed Ma’s message that Taiwan and Japan are “special partners” who share a “special relationship.”

This talk of “special relations between partners” reminds me of what former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) said nine years ago on “special state-to-state relations” between Taiwan and China, or what Lee referred to as the Two States Theory.

Viewed in this light, and because Taiwan and Japan are island states in the Western Pacific that share a “special partnership,” the two could be considered a “special case of Two States Theory.”

Existing relations are extremely complex, as any decision made in Taiwan can have deep and long-lasting effects on Japan. Ma should remember this and speak to Japan before making major decisions on cross-strait relations. Ma and Wu should also repeat the message to China to allow it to understand the complexity of Taiwan-Japan relations — and to keep China in check.

Speaking of partnerships, we should take a closer look at the relationship between China and France. On Nov. 27, when French President Nicolas Sarkozy decided to meet with the Dalai Lama, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang (秦剛) said France should set an example because it is a strategic partner of China.

China’s threat to launch economic sanctions against France because it went against what China believes “complete strategic cooperation partners” should do shows that extreme caution is needed when signing any agreement with Beijing. This is because China will force signatory nations to accept its one-sided interpretation of how partner nations should act.

It is regrettable that politicians in Western nations are becoming partners with China out of personal interest and profit. How can Western nations based on the values of democracy and human rights, which are in stark contrast to the dictatorship of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), become partners with China?

In the event that China acts in a way that these Western partners would find objectionable, they must still grit their teeth and support China, or at least register no objection.

In effect, these partners must deny their beliefs and principles.

Former French president Jacques Chirac visited China in 1997 and 2004 and became a slave to China by becoming one of its partners. He and leaders of other Western nations should try to free themselves from China and maintain their reputations.

Just what sort of partnership do the KMT and the CCP have? A partnership characterized by collusion in the subjugation of Taiwan, perhaps?

I would ask ordinary Taiwanese this in response: “Are you willing to become ‘partners’ with the CCP?”

Paul Lin is a political commentator based in Taiwan.