Listen to the voice

Descendants of ex-KMT troops call for citizenship
　

STATELESS: After demonstrating outside the Legislative Yuan, the protesters moved to the Executive Yuan, where they were invited to talk with low-level officials
　

By Loa Iok-Sin
STAFF REPORTER
Friday, Jul 04, 2008, Page 2
　

More than 400 descendants of former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) soldiers who were left behind in Myanmar and Thailand 60 years ago demonstrated yesterday in Taipei, demanding the government grant them citizenship.

Following the KMT’s defeat in the Chinese Civil War 60 years ago, tens of thousands of its soldiers moved across the Chinese border into Myanmar and Thailand.

They became trapped there when the KMT regime collapsed in China and fled to Taiwan.

When the governments of Myanmar and Thailand refused to grant them residency or citizenship, they became stateless.

“Although they’ve always been stateless, the government has, in the past, allowed them to come to Taiwan to study and granted them citizenship right away — sometimes within one week or one day,” said Liu Hsiao-hua (劉小華), executive director of the Thai-Myanmar Region Chinese Offspring Refugee Service Association.

Since none of them hold Thai or Myanmar citizenship, they had to come to Taiwan with forged or bought passports.

“But the government told them as long as they could get to Taiwan, it didn’t care how they did it,” Liu said.

The situation changed in May 1999 when the Immigration Act (移民法) was revised and the provision was canceled, Liu said.

However, the Overseas Compatriot Affairs Commission (OCAC) and the Ministry of Education (MOE) did not publicize the new policy and continued to recruit students in those areas.

“I came to Taiwan in 2000 and was told by the MOE that I may get permanent residency in Taiwan after five to seven years,” said Wan Chien-chu (王建菊), who came from northern Thailand and graduated from the National Taipei College of Business in February.

“I’ve received my degree, but without proper documents, I cannot take any national exams for a license and therefore I cannot work,” she said.

This was also the case for Huang Chien-pang (黃建邦), who said that his family has “been stateless for three generations.”

“After buying a forged passport and paying my tuition, I’m NT$120,000 [US$3,950] in debt,” Huang said. “So I had to quit school and began working as a construction worker to make about NT$10,000 to NT$20,000 a month.”

Huang added that without proper documents, he can’t do anything if he’s not paid, and has to pay the full cost when seeing a doctor as he has no health insurance.

However terrible their life in Taiwan is, there is no way back either.

“Since most of them came on forged passports, the Myanmar and Thai governments will not allow them to return — so they’re trapped,” Liu said.

After demonstrating outside the Legislative Yuan, they moved on to the Executive Yuan, where they were invited inside to talk with two low-level officials.

However, the representatives left the Executive Yuan disappointed.

“They only said that they would study the possibility of revising current laws, but wouldn’t give us a concrete timetable,” Liu said. “Before any changes in the law, they [the students] will still have to live illegally — meaning that they’re breaking the law even for walking on the street.”

Listen to the voice

Never underestimate propaganda
　

By Cao Changqing 曹長青
Friday, Jul 04, 2008, Page 8

‘The power of a dictatorship to brainwash its populace is much stronger than the power of facts to open minds. This has been seen time and again.’

Tuesday marked the 87th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Its bloody revolution resulted in the deaths of millions of people and the destruction of countless families. But the Chinese public remains largely numb to the brutal reality thanks to propaganda and brainwashing.

A Taiwanese student in Japan sent me a letter several days ago, saying that her 18-year-old Chinese classmate learned the facts behind the 1989 student movement in Beijing and the Tiananmen Massacre on the Internet while studying abroad. But his conclusion was that the authorities had no choice but to crack down on the demonstrators, lest chaos ensue.

Another of this Taiwanese student’s Chinese classmates is a middle-aged woman whose father, a former CCP cadre, was denounced during the Cultural Revolution, causing great suffering for her family. Yet she still admires Chinese leader Mao Zedong (毛澤東) and believes Mao was one of the greatest men to ever live.

The Taiwanese student wrote that it upset her to see that these Chinese students seem incapable of changing their opinions even after living in the free world and accessing information freely.

“Is this a form of Stockholm syndrome or the result of the CCP’s ideological education?” she asked.

The power of a dictatorship to brainwash its populace is much stronger than the power of facts to open minds. This has been seen time and again, under such dictators as Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao and Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石).

Long-term brainwashing and propaganda divests the public of its ability to judge facts.

In his classic novel 1984, George Orwell painted a dark picture of this phenomenon. Winston Smith, the main character, is shown four fingers but told he sees five. Eventually he is convinced that he sees five fingers. When he answers “five,” he does not do so out of fear, but because he is so numbed by all the lies that he actually believes what he says.

In a recent example of a massive propaganda effort, Chinese media eulogized the rescue work in the wake of the massive earthquake in Sichuan Province, praising the leadership of Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) and Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶).

Chinese activists and intellectuals and even President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) were touched by the efforts and lauded the Chinese government.

A US-based poet and self-proclaimed Chinese dissident wrote an article praising the regime for lowering the flag to half-mast to honor the dead and saying Hu and Wen had lowered themselves to the level of the public for the first time.

Meanwhile, a Beijing dissident called on the regime to show the same respect for the victims of the Tiananmen Square Massacre by lowering the flag in their memory.

China’s five-star flag is in reality no more than a symbol of state violence, stained red by the blood of more than 80 million people who lost their lives to the CCP’s cruelty. Lowering the Chinese flag is hardly a worthy form of commemoration for any of the CCP’s victims.

But the Chinese people, still oppressed by dictatorship, are not the only ones living in the shadow of propaganda. Twenty years after the lifting of martial law, the mark of the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) brainwashing is still evident.

Ma, who holds a doctoral degree in law from Harvard University, still kneels before the grave of Chiang. The only explanation for such behavior is that Ma truly believes Chiang was a great man. Nobody forces Ma to venerate Chiang today — he does so sincerely and of his own free will.

Neither Chinese living abroad nor those Taiwanese who whole-heartedly support the KMT are forced to do so. They do so of their own free will.

I cannot help but think of Smith in 1984. As the book ends, he leaves his traumatic brainwashing with a smile on his face. He is completely brainwashed and incapable of critical thought. Not only is he unaware of this, but he is also content.

Cao Changqing is a writer based in the US.