Chen Shui-bian chained
　

HANDCUFFED: Prosecutors requested that the former president be remanded in custody, saying he might tamper with evidence in the bribery case against him
　

By Jimmy Chuang, Ko Shu-ling, Flora Wang and Rich Chang
STAFF REPORTERS, WITH AGENCIES
Wednesday, Nov 12, 2008, Page 1
　

A handcuffed former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) was taken to the Taipei District Court in police custody yesterday as prosecutors sought his detention in connection with alleged embezzlement from the presidential “state affairs” fund and claims of money laundering by the former first family.

The detention hearing was ongoing at press time. If the request were granted, Chen would be the first former president in Taiwan’s history to be detained.

Chen raised his cuffed hands into the air as he was escorted into a waiting car, shouting “Political persecution, judicial persecution” and “Taiwan, jiayou!”

Chen Shui-bian said last night he had been struck by a bailiff and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) requested that he be taken to hospital for a check-up.

“We have asked that the suspect be detained on concerns that if freed, he might tamper with evidence concerning his role in the alleged case of embezzlement and bribe taking,” said prosecutor Chen Yun-nan (陳雲南), spokesman for the Supreme Prosecutors Office’s Special Investigation Panel (SIP).

Prosecutors made the detention request after questioning Chen for seven hours over his alleged embezzlement of NT$14.8 million (US$450,500) in secret diplomatic funds during his eight-year tenure. His wife, Wu Shu-jen (吳淑珍), has been charged and is being tried.

They said the former president was also suspected of accepting bribes from local businessmen and laundering at least US$21 million in funds abroad.

Chen Shui-bian has said that while his wife wired the funds abroad without his knowledge, the money was what had remained from previous election campaign donations.

Chen Yun-nan said prosecutors had collected enough evidence to bring corruption charges against the former president.

As the crimes Chen Shui-bian is suspected of could lead to a prison sentence of more than five years, prosecutors decided to file a detention request, he said.

Chen Yun-nan said that the questioning had been conducted by prosecutors Lin Cher-hui and Lee Hai-lung (李海龍) and began at 9:30am.

Chen Shui-bian was cooperative at first, answering all their questions, but stopped cooperating when Lin and Lee began to ask more sensitive questions, Chen Yun-nan said.

Outside the court in a light drizzle, a dozen of the former president’s supporters shouting “injustice” and “political persecution” were kept at bay with barbed wire barricades, while several of his opponents on the other side of the barricades clapped their hands, shouting “long live the Taiwanese judiciary.”

Elsewhere in Taiwan, some of Chen Shui-bian’s opponents lit firecrackers to show their delight over his possible detention.

He had arrived at the SIP office yesterday morning around 9am. With traffic controls in force and nearly 3,000 police officers standing by, Chen Shui-bian left his office, which is located opposite the SIP offices. He stopped outside the entrance of the SIP offices for a short press conference.

“I am going to Taiwan’s Bastille. They can imprison me physically, but they cannot control my mind,” he said.

“The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party see me as their No. 1 prisoner, as I am the biggest obstacle blocking their way to reunification,” he told reporters.

He accused his successor, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), of pursuing a political agenda and punishing him for demonstrations during a visit by China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林) last week.

“Chen Yunlin had a bad time in Taiwan ... so Ma Ying-jeou wants to put me in jail as a sacrifice to appease China. I am very honored and proud to play such a role,” the former president said.

“I will not be imprisoned in vain and I will continue to strive ... Long live Taiwan democracy. Long live Taiwan independence,” he said.

The Presidential Office said yesterday it would respect the court’s ruling in Chen Shui-bian’s lawsuit, but dismissed his allegation that Ma had ordered his detention.

Presidential Office Spokesman Wang Yu-chi (王郁琦) declined to comment on the legal aspects of the case, but denied that Ma had ordered Chen detained.

“We have publicly renounced such groundless allegations before,” he said. “Chen’s legal situation has never been discussed at the daily meetings of the Presidential Office, the Executive Yuan, the KMT or the KMT legislative caucus.”

Chen Shui-bian said on Monday evening that he expected to be detained yesterday when he responded to a subpoena to testify in court because he believed Ma had ordered his detention, adding that he would exercise his right to remain silent.

The KMT yesterday slammed Chen Shui-bian for drawing a parallel between his overseas fund and that of Sun Yat-sen (孫中山), which the KMT regards as the founding father of the Republic of China.

KMT Spokesman Lee Chien-jung (李建榮) said the analogy was ludicrous, because Sun had saved the money overseas to build a new republic, while Chen Shui-bian pocketed government money and wired it abroad for personal gain.

Lee made the remarks during a panel discussion held by the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Library Foundation on the eve of Sun’s 142nd birthday.

Lee said Chen Shui-bian had often mentioned Sun during his decades-long political career.

He did so on Sept. 18, 1995, when he said during an interview with the Chinese-language United Daily News that he admired Sun’s selflessness and that Sun was someone he would like to emulate.

Chen Shui-bian admitted in August this year that he “did something that was not allowed by the law,” and claimed that he had been inspired by Sun to wire some of his money overseas, Lee said.

Maa Shaw-chang (馬紹章), executive director of the KMT’s think tank, the National Policy Foundation, said that while Sun raised funds to overthrow the Qing Dynasty, Chen Shui-bian never made any effort to establish a new republic during his two terms in office, but instead embezzled money.

While Sun’s legacy was one of ethical assets, that of Chen Shui-bian was an ethical liability, Maa said.

KMT caucus secretary-general Chang Sho-wen (張碩文) yesterday accused the former president of attempting to discredit the judicial system.

“Chen was trying to take advantage of Taiwanese people’s kindheartedness and politicize his corruption case,” Chang said at a press conference.

“But the whole world knows that he is under investigation for corruption,” Chang said.

KMT Legislator Wu Yu-sheng (吳育昇), who also attended the conference, defended the impartiality of the prosecutors, saying that Taiwan obeyed the rule of law and that there was no way the judiciary could be influenced by any political camp.

When asked for comment, KMT Legislator Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) cheered the prosecutors’ decision to seek to detain the former president, saying that people should set off firecrackers in celebration and that Chen Shui-bian’s attack on at the judiciary was “ridiculous.”

The DPP caucus yesterday said Chen Shui-bian had been detained in order to humiliate and harm the DPP.

DPP caucus whip William Lai (賴清德) told a press conference that the judiciary could investigate Chen Shui-bian, indict him and find him guilty if the evidence proved he had committed crimes.

However, Lai said, the DPP opposed the detention of Chen Shui-bian just for the sake of taking his statement.

He said the judiciary could harm the DPP by its actions, but would also harm itself because it would lose public trust.

He said Taiwan would be further split following Chen Shui-bian’s detention.

DPP Legislator Gao Jyh-peng (高志鵬) said the current political atmosphere had driven the authorities to take Chen Shui-bian into custody, and that meant the former president would not be subject to a fair and independent investigation.

He said prosecutors had purposely staged the scene showing Chen Shui-bian bound in handcuffs as it would leave the public with a negative impression of all DPP politicians.

Gao said that not a single KMT government official had been detained in handcuffs in the last 10 years, and that included Ma, who was indicted on corruption charges over the use of his special allowance fund during his stint as Taipei mayor.

“Such an action is meant to humiliate the DPP,” Gao said.

DPP Legislator Lee Chun-yee (李俊毅) said: “The DPP will not be felled by this.”

Sit-in students insist on apologies
　

By Flora Wang, Ko Shu-ling and Rich Chang
STAFF REPORTERS
Wednesday, Nov 12, 2008, Page 1
　

Students staging silent sit-ins nationwide in protest at how the government dealt with demonstrations against visiting Chinese envoys last week said yesterday that they would not compromise their demand of apologies from the president and the premier.

The student protesters issued a statement on their Web blog, action­1106.blogspot.com, accusing Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) of being arrogant.

“Premier Liu Chao-shiuan, as the head of the Executive Yuan, is arrogant and never engages in introspection. His remarks show his patriarchal arrogance toward the students and his attitude is no different from that of former premiers during the Martial Law era,” the students said.

Their condemnation of the premier was removed from the blog for an unknown reason last night.

The students were referring to an interview with Liu aired on ETTV on Monday night.

In the interview, Liu said the students’ demands — that President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and Liu apologize and that National Police Agency Director-General Wang Cho-chun (王卓鈞) and National Security Bureau Director-General Tsai Tsao-ming (蔡朝明) step down for what they called the use of “excessive force” by police last week — were not in line with mainstream public opinion.

The Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) reported yesterday that Liu had told ETTV anchorwoman Lu Hsiu-fang (盧秀芳) during a break in the interview that he had not even offered an apology when lawmakers urged him to do so in the legislature last week.

“Things like this will soon be over if [I] hang in there,” Liu was quoted as saying.

The students said this demanded an immediate apology from Liu.

Dubbing themselves the Wild Strawberry Student Movement, the students began a sit-in in front of the Executive Yuan last Thursday, arguing that the police resorted to excessive force against protesters opposing the visit of China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林) last week.

They called on the government to amend the Assembly and Parade Law (集會遊行法) to lift the requirement forcing rally organizers to seek government approval before staging a demonstration.

The students reconvened their demonstration at Liberty Square at the National Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall on Saturday after they were evicted by police on Friday night.

Different groups of students have held sit-ins in central and southern Taiwan in support of their Taipei counterparts since Sunday.

Some 500 academics also initiated a signature campaign on Monday in support of the students, demanding that the nation’s schools fully guarantee students’ freedom of speech.

The academics also urged the Ministry of Justice and the Control Yuan to launch an immediate probe into what they called the use of violence and human rights violations by police in their protection of Chen last week.

“We are furious about the Ma administration’s recent use of violence to limit people’s basic human rights in the name of protection [of Chen]. We believe freedom of speech and the rights to assemble and parade are the bottom line of Taiwan’s democracy and should not be compromised,” the academics’ joint statement said.

Meanwhile, an elderly man claiming to be a member of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) set himself on fire around 1pm at Liberty Square yesterday.

The 80-year-old man left a note at the scene, claiming that he had been a KMT member since 1950 and saying he wanted to show his dissatisfaction with how the police mistreated pedestrians carrying the national flag last week.

He was rushed to the nearby National Taiwan University Hospital.

Doctors said he had suffered third-degree burns to 80 percent to 90 percent of his body and was being treated in the hospital’s intensive care unit.

President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday urged the public to fully discuss legal revisions to the Assembly and Parade Law before the legislation is amended.

Ma said it had been one of his campaign pledges to amend the law, and added that he agreed the law should be amended to allow protest organizers to report planned rallies to law enforcement authorities, rather than having to apply for permission from the police.

The two approaches were practically identical, as rally applications were almost never rejected, he said.

Ma said the students’ concern for public affairs and human rights deserved recognition.

As both the ruling and opposition parties supported amending the law, Ma said the public should have an open mind and strike a balance between civil liberty and public order.

To ensure adherence to the principles of democracy, Ma said, the public, including the students protesting at Liberty Square, should exhaustively discuss the issue and listen to different opinions before the law is amended.

He said he had faith in Taiwan’s democracy because democracy was not only the foundation of Taiwan’s political security, but also a pillar of economic development.

The legislature yesterday scheduled a review of proposed amendments to the Assembly and Parade Law for next Wednesday.

The legislature’s Procedure Committee decided that draft amendments from the KMT and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) would be reviewed in a meeting of the Internal Administration Committee.

DPP Legislator Tsai Huang-liang (蔡煌瑯) said at the Procedure Committee meeting that the DPP caucus hoped the KMT caucus would not block its version.

KMT Legislator Wu Yu-sheng (吳育昇) said the KMT caucus supported amending the law, but opposed the DPP draft because it would allow protests at the Presidential Office, the Executive Yuan, the presidential residence, airports, important military facilities and embassies or offices of foreign countries.

Both parties’ draft amendments would eliminate the need to seek approval from law-enforcement authorities for public rallies.

Wu said the Internal Administration Committee would hold a public hearing on the amendment on Nov. 27, and would invite students to participate.

DPP caucus whip William Lai (賴清德) told reporters the DPP caucus had requested that the amendment be allowed to skip a preliminary review so that it could pass its third reading by Friday’s plenary session.

If the KMT caucus blocked such an arrangement, the caucus hoped that the amendments could pass a preliminary review next Wednesday and pass the third reading at the Nov. 28 plenary session, Lai said.

The Assembly and Parade Law, which took effect under the KMT administration in 1988, has come under fire from several rights groups over the years as an instrument used by the government to control the public and curb freedom of expression.

The utter failure of Taiwan’s leaders

Wednesday, Nov 12, 2008, Page 8

Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林) visited last week to ink four deals that address direct sea and postal links, daily charter flights and food safety. Although the meeting was nominally meant to discuss cross-strait economic policy, it quickly became political.

It is difficult to believe that the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) administration of Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) couldn’t see what was coming. Ma should know that a sizable percentage of Taiwan’s population viewed Chen’s arrival as yet another symbolic blow to Taiwan’s political autonomy.

Deploying 7,000 police officers over a four-day period and restricting the public’s freedom of movement were a recipe for disaster. Ma either misjudged public opinion, showing how ineffective he is as the nation’s top decision-maker, or he didn’t care about the political ramifications of his actions — at least not in Taiwan.

Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) politicians, for their part, acted as if they were surprised at the violence that erupted during the protests. The DPP has known for a long time that the ARATS chairman was coming to Taiwan. That the party didn’t find some means of negotiating with the administration seems to demonstrate that it is continuing with the methods that the previous opposition suffered from — the refusal to accept the mandate of those who hold executive power.

The KMT refused to cooperate with the DPP when it was in power for eight years. But saying that this justifies unintelligent politics is as useful as saying the Ma administration can do whatever it pleases because of the perception — real or created — that the former administration of Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) was corrupt. Neither does anything to help Taiwan’s evolving democratization and international status.

Taiwan’s electorate, for good or bad, chose the KMT in the last presidential and legislative elections. The DPP has to accept the fact that it no longer wields executive power and needs to work as diligently as possible within the confines of the current situation. It might not agree with how the KMT negotiates with China, but the presidential election showed that in the economic field, cross-strait liberalization is what a majority of Taiwanese want.

What Taiwanese don’t want is to be ruled by China, and it is here that the DPP has much more room to maneuver. It could, for example, have relented on cross-strait trade while suggesting an alternative location for the meeting. This would have retained all the pageantry that the KMT wanted while keeping negotiations within the economic realm.

Hindsight, of course, helps to put events in a more rational perspective. What the events of last week demonstrate is a total failure of Taiwan’s leaders to act effectively. The DPP is struggling to communicate a coherent message because it refused to work with the Ma administration, while the KMT failed because it refused to listen to voices outside the party and reverted to time-dishonored tactics reminiscent of the Martial Law era. In the end, it is Taiwanese who suffer.

Surrendering sovereignty

While the implications of the talks between the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) are still unknown, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and his fellow KMT dignitaries’ frantic pursuit of a position as governor of a Chinese province rather than serving as the leader of a sovereign state — Taiwan — is becoming clear as events unfold.

The public has the inalienable right to show its distaste through peaceful demonstrations against Chinese envoys, who in the past have done their best to verbally intimidate and denigrate Taiwan in international settings. Unfortunately, Mr Ma was so humbled that to make Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林) and his entourage feel at home when they visited last week, he ordered whatever it took to ensure that the demonstrations were not seen by his “noble” guests.

Not only was this a poor negotiation strategy, but it also showed that the Ma administration was ready to surrender democracy and freedom of expression, for which Taiwanese have fought so hard for more than five decades, just to please the Chinese. It’s the administration and its inability to deal with the economic problems — not the Chinese envoys per se or the riot police — that triggered the anger and violence in the ensuing protests.

If Chen’s visit could trigger the mass deployment of riot police and the temporary suspension of freedom of expression, we should not be surprised to see Ma sending tanks into the crowd as China did in Tiananmen Square two decades ago when Chinese officers come to Taiwan next time to show his Chinese superiors that he and the KMT are really in the same boat with the CCP against democracy and independence.

Han Lin
Chunan, Miaoli County

Taiwan’s president, the ‘little man’
　

By Jerome KeatinG
Wednesday, Nov 12, 2008, Page 8

After Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) Chairman Chen Yunlin’s (陳雲林) stormy five-day sojourn in Taiwan, it is time for Taiwanese to see their primping president for the little man that he really is.

What should have been a routine visit by a low-level Chinese official to ink prearranged agreements turned into a near riot and cost Taiwanese millions of dollars in wasted resources and opened their eyes to police brutality not seen since the days of the Kaohsiung Incident. This is not because of the legitimate anger and protests staged by concerned citizens, but because of the inept mishandling of and callous indifference to the whole situation by Taiwan’s sometime president, Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九).

Let there be no question about it: Blame lies squarely on the shoulders of Ma. So caught up was Ma in the fact that his image was suffering and that his approval rating had dropped to an all-time low of 23 percent that he could only see that he needed something “historic” to prop up his failed China policy. So caught up was he in wanting to claim to have done something “historic” to present to the US and Chinese governments and gain their paternalistic approval that he became oblivious to the feelings and concerns of his own country.

Despite all of Ma’s pre-arranged hype, Chen’s visit was nothing historic. The agreements that ARATS inked with Taiwan’s Straits Exchange Foundation were agreements that had begun and been fashioned in the preceding years by former president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) administration. Higher-level officials from Taiwan had also visited China; the only thing that could be claimed to be historic was that it was the first time that an arrogant, low-level Chinese official deigned to visit Taiwan and be wined and dined by his party’s previous enemies. If that is historic, it is only historic for the little minds of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).

With this background, even a dunce could have seen the storm that was gathering. Taiwanese are not against trade with China; Taiwan is one of the biggest — if not the biggest — investor and trader with China. What Taiwanese are against is trade at the cost of their sovereignty.

After fighting for decades for democracy, they have legitimate concerns about whether they would be sold out, judging from the loose, cavalier and speedy way Ma was handling the meeting. In this matter, Ma has lost all credibility and the trust of Taiwanese. The past two months saw three increasingly large protests against Ma, with the final march on Oct. 25 attended by some 600,000 people in the pan-blue capital.

If Ma had given clear, concrete public assurances before Chen Yunlin’s visit, Taiwanese could have handled the arrogance of the Chinese representative. But instead of reassuring the public he would never sell out Taiwan, instead of giving clear signals to China and the Taiwanese that he is the president of a sovereign country, Ma hid in the presidential palace and conjured up legal constitutional conundrums to state why any explanations were unnecessary.

It was therefore not a surprise when Chen Yunlin came that the protests became a reality and increased in size day by day. At this crucial point, instead of reassuring the public that their fears were unfounded, Ma’s solution was to sequester Chen Yunlin in the Grand Hotel and turn it into a fortress surrounded by police. When he left the hotel to be wined and dined by the KMT throughout the city, Ma’s only solution again was to increase police support. When the public voiced open disapproval, Ma approved orders to attack.

Throughout the five days, where was Ma? When Ma should have been in the streets convincing the public of his sincerity, he was nowhere to be seen. Instead of sincerity, the public saw arrogance. Despite being the people’s representative, Ma felt he didn’t have to explain himself to the public.

This is the increasing contention in Taiwan. Not only is Ma seen as incompetent, but he is also viewed as arrogant. If there are any Taiwan watchers in the US or Europe who have doubts about how Taiwanese view Ma’s ineptitude, they only have to examine the following: It took US President George W. Bush six to eight years in office to convince the majority of Americans of his lack of leadership and ineptitude; Ma has been able to do the same for Taiwan in only four months.

Jerome Keating is a writer based in Taipei.

Sit-in: A lesson in preserving democracy
　

By Lin Huan-yi 林奐怡
Wednesday, Nov 12, 2008, Page 8

When I searched for Songs of Taiwan (台灣之歌) on YouTube recently, I was stunned by what I saw. I could hardly believe that what I found was really the Taiwan I know. I support communication between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait, but when the national dignity and freedom of speech that we are so proud of are trampled like this, how can one not feel pain? I was moved to voice my discontent with the government.

I learned about the “Operation Seige” protest against Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林) from the newspapers. Despite the chance that I would be labeled a supporter of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) if I joined the protest, I still went.

However, once there all I heard and saw was nationalistic shouting and confrontations, with demonstrators egged on by politicians delivering sensational and theatrical speeches. This did not reflect why I was participating. I am unwilling to downgrade myself and become a tool in the hands of politicians. Besides, I felt that the protests were not aimed at achieving social justice as I had expected, so I quietly left and went home.

After I got home, I went online and learned that a sit-in petition organized by Lee Ming-tsung (李明璁), an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at National Taiwan University, had already attracted much attention on PTT2, which is one of Taiwan’s biggest bulletin board systems. After reading the posts carefully, I felt that the protest dovetailed with my pursuit of social justice and resolved to join the sit-in.

Later in the evening on Friday, protesters were expelled from the site of the sit-in near the Legislative Yuan. Hundreds of teachers and students, including myself, were bundled into police vans and dropped off at different locations around town. However, it was not long before we made our way back downtown and gathered again, this time at the National Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall.

This is a living lesson in democracy. I talked to a teacher who said that democracy does not appear by itself and is often a result of street movements. Sadly, the democracy that results from such street movements is often destroyed by those in power. The concept of civil disobedience did not appear in my school textbooks, but I have now learned about it firsthand. I have also witnessed how the media sensationalize and distort simple appeals for human rights.

The pursuit of social justice must go beyond political camps. Take my schoolmate, for example: She took part in the “red shirt” campaign against former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), but she is also participating in the sit-in protest this time. To which camp or party does she belong, then?

Unfortunately, Taiwan is still trapped in a blue-green dichotomy. Why should students be labeled as one or the other when expressing discontent with the government? Does this also mean students are deprived of their right to discuss public issues? This is ridiculously unfair and should never happen.

On Saturday, I sat in the rain all day under the cover of a wide-brimmed farmer’s hat. Despite the miserable weather, I felt fortunate to participate in the student movement and I am certainly proud of the teachers and students who sat in the rain with me. We are safeguarding the universal values of human rights and democracy through a peaceful and rational process.

Lin Huan-yi is a student in the Department of Graphic Arts Communication at National Taiwan Normal University.