Uighur struggle draws al-Qaeda

AFP , HONG KONG
Wednesday, Jul 15, 2009, Page 1

Al-Qaeda is threatening for the first time to attack Chinese interests overseas in retaliation for the deaths of Muslims in the restive region of Xinjiang, a risk analysis group said.

The call for reprisals against China comes from the Algerian-based offshoot al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), a summary of a report by the international consultancy Stirling Assynt said.

“Although AQIM appear to be the first arm of al-Qaeda to officially state they will target Chinese interests, others are likely to follow,” said the report, which was first divulged by the South China Morning Post yesterday.

Osama bin Laden’s network has not previously threatened China, but the Stirling report said a thirst for vengeance over Beijing’s clampdown in Xinjiang was spreading over the global jihadist community.

Hundreds of thousands of Chinese work in the Middle East and North Africa, including 50,000 in Algeria, estimated the group, which has offices in London and Hong Kong providing risk advice to corporate and official clients.

“This threat should be taken seriously,” Stirling said, basing its information on people who it said had seen the AQIM instruction.

“There is an increasing amount of chatter ... among jihadists who claim they want to see action against China,” he said.

“Some of these individuals have been actively seeking information on China’s interests in the Muslim world, which they could use for targeting purposes,” Stirling said.

Stirling said the extremist group could well target Chinese projects in Yemen in a bid to topple the Beijing-friendly government of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

The intelligence firm also cited al-Qaeda’s killing of 24 Algerian security officers who were meant to be protection for Chinese engineers three weeks ago.

“On that occasion they did not attack the Chinese engineers because the target was the project on which they were working,” he said.

“Now, future attacks of this kind are likely to target security forces and Chinese engineers alike,” the report said.

The most likely scenario would be that al-Qaeda’s central leadership would encourage their affiliates in North Africa and the Arabian peninsula to attack Chinese targets near at hand, it said.

Al-Qaeda centrally does “not want to open a new front with China,” the analysis said.

“But equally their sense of Muslim solidarity compels them to help and/or to be seen to be helping. This is also a factor in helping the organization regain support and funding from their global constituency,” it said.

Chen’s office to file against judge
　

TALK SHOW: The former president’s lawyer said that individuals are responsible for their own speech and the court cannot hold Chen responsible for what others say

By Mo Yan-chih and Shelley Huang
STAFF REPORTERS
Wednesday, Jul 15, 2009, Page 1

“Just because a lawyer was interviewed by the media does not mean this can be one of the reasons for detention.”— Shih Yi-ling, attorney

Accusing Presiding Judge Tsai Shou-hsun (蔡守訓) of distorting former president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) words to extend his detention for two months, Chen’s office said yesterday it would file cases against Tsai with the Control Yuan and Taipei District Court.

Tsai quoted Chen’s conversations with his staff and visitors out of context and used the conversations against Chen, his office said in the statement, adding that it would collect evidence of the court’s “abuse of power” and file against Tsai with the Control Yuan and Taipei District Court.

In defending its decision to extend Chen’s detention for the third time, the court on Monday cited several reasons used in previous rulings — the concern that Chen would collude with witnesses, destroy evidence or try to abscond. It also cited Chen’s “interference” with the case by talking to the ­public through friends and colleagues who visited him at the detention center.

In response to the court’s concerns about Chen asking lawyers to defend his case on call-in shows on TV, Chen’s office issued a statement yesterday saying that the former president believed he would not be treated justly in Tsai’s court, and felt that it would be necessary to clarify the truth in the “people’s court” instead.

“Chen encouraged lawyers who understand the case to explain the truth behind the case to the public and seek justice in the people’s court,” the statement said.

Chiang Chih-ming (江志銘), Chen Shui-bian’s secretary, said Tsai manipulated Chen’s remarks and distorted his words to extend the detention period.

“Former president Chen cannot agree with the court’s accusation that he has interfered with the case or prepared to flee the country by applying for a new passport,” ­Chiang said yesterday.

The former president’s court-­appointed ­attorney Tseng Te-rong (曾德榮) yesterday said he would submit a request to have the former president sent to hospital as well as appeal Monday’s detention ruling.

Tseng expressed regret at the Taipei District Court’s decision to detain the former president for another two months.

He said he disagreed with Tsai’s reasoning that the former president was meddling with the judiciary by instructing his former lawyers and subordinates to talk to the public through the press or television talk shows.

“An individual should be responsible for his or her own speech. [The court] should not make the former president responsible [for what lawyers said to the public] by saying it was a result of his instructions,” Tseng said.

He said he would discuss the matter with Chen and appeal the detention ruling in a few days.

Shih Yi-ling (石宜琳), who served as one of Chen’s attorneys before the former president dismissed them all to protest the judicial system, also said the court’s ruling was unacceptable.

He said that he chose to speak on talk shows himself and the former president did not have to take responsibility.

“Just because a lawyer was interviewed by the media does not mean this can be one of the reasons for detention,” he said.

Chen has been diagnosed with tendonitis by detention center physicians. Tseng also said he would ask the district court to have Chen’s foot checked by a doctor.

Students consider China unfriendly toward Taiwan: poll

STAFF WRITER, WITH CNA
Wednesday, Jul 15, 2009, Page 2

Despite improved relations between Taiwan and China over the past year, China remains at the top of a list of countries that young people consider unfriendly toward Taiwan, a survey by the King Car Education Foundation found.

In the poll, conducted last month among senior high school and university students, 82.9 percent of respondents cited China as a country unfriendly toward Taiwan.

Second on the list was South Korea, which was named by 33.3 percent of respondents.

Among the countries viewed as friendly toward Taiwan, Japan topped the list, named by 44.4 percent of respondents.

While 41.6 percent of the students said they thought the US was friendly toward Taiwan, 29.7 percent said it was unfriendly.

The US, China and Japan were most often named as the countries most important to Taiwan’s economic and trade development. The US was cited by 84 percent of respondents, China by 78.7 percent and Japan by 75.7 percent.

Sixty-eight percent of respondents said they considered it important to enhance their English skills, while 60.8 percent said they thought having a global perspective would help them boost their international competitiveness.

However, only 22 percent of students said they kept up with current events abroad on a daily basis. Most students said they only paid attention to a single topic of interest when it came to foreign news, such as sports or entertainment.

Most of those polled agreed that access to information from abroad, proficiency in a foreign language and knowledge of etiquette in other cultures were essential to having a global perspective.

Inability to communicate in foreign languages, lack of knowledge about other countries and lack of experience hosting foreign guests contribute the most to difficulties in dealing with foreigners, most students said.

The survey was conducted among 1,738 students in seven urban areas and had a margin of error of 3 percent.

Groups urge change to Lobbying Act
　

LOOPHOLES: A DPP legislator and civic groups said the act had failed to regulate its main target: companies that engage in lobbying that has not been registered

By Shelley Huang
STAFF REPORTER
Wednesday, Jul 15, 2009, Page 3
　

An opposition lawmaker and several civic groups yesterday called for an amendment to the Lobbying Act (遊說法), saying that passage of the act last year had been ineffective in regulating lobbying by interest groups.

Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Huang Sue-ying (黃淑英) said the act was intended to be a “sunshine bill” but had failed to target groups that needed to be regulated.

The Legislative Yuan passed the act in July last year, making Taiwan the third country after the US and Canada to enact such legislation.

Huang said that since the law took effect on Aug. 8, there have been 792 registered cases of lobbying to legislators.

Among the registered lobbyists, which includes individuals, unions, professional associations, none were professional lobbyists, or corporations that lobby on behalf of others, but their representatives could be seen in the legislature, Huang said.

“The Lobbying Act was meant to regulate lobbying by [corporations], but none of them have registered,” Huang said.

“We often see individuals or public relations company representatives at the legislature who engage in lobbying, but they had not registered in accordance with the law,” Huang said.

She said many lobbyists try to get around the law by using other means, such as using written petitions or talking to the public officials' assistants, who are not covered by the Lobbying Act.

The act also requires government agencies that are potential targets of lobbyists to designate a special unit or official to accept registrations by lobbyists.

However, many government agencies have not done so, Huang said, adding that “the government is setting a bad example by breaking the law.”

Judicial Reform Foundation executive director Lin Feng-cheng (林峰正) criticized the law for its many loopholes in the law.

“The act has so many exceptions that those who want to get around the law can do so easily,” Lin said.

While the act requires all lobbyists to register their plans in advance, it does not have any influence over rich and powerful lobbyists who have established tacit understandings with certain lawmakers and therefore do not have to make their lobbying efforts public, he said.

Tsai Wan-fen (蔡宛芬), secretary-general of Taiwan Women's Link, said the act puts nongovernmental organizations in a difficult position.

She said because the law requires all lobbyists to register their expenses, it is sometimes difficult to determine whether certain tasks, such as telling staffers to write a petition, should be included under salary expenses.

“When government officials dine with rich and powerful business groups, and the groups give them written petitions, are they being regulated [by the Lobbying Act]?” asked Son Yu-lian (孫友聯), secretary general of the Taiwan Labour Front.

The Lobbying Act defines lobbying as any direct contact with public officials open to lobbying. However, it prohibits lobbying legislation related to certain matters, such as national defense.

Letters from the White Terror era
　

DYING WISH: Fifty-six years after his death, the family of Huang Wen-kung, who was executed during the White Terror era, finally read his message of love and courage

By Hsieh Wen-hua
STAFF REPORTER
Wednesday, Jul 15, 2009, Page 3
　

As is the case with many victims of political repression during the White Terror era, the death of dentist Huang Wen-kung (黃溫恭) was long a taboo subject in his family.

Now, a secret that even Huang’s wife and his daughter did not know has been pieced together and brought to light by his 29-year-old granddaughter, Chang Yi-jung (張旖容).

“I was amazed to see that my grandfather had written five letters to express his dying wish before he was executed 56 years ago,” Chang said.

Because Huang’s executioners did not give his last letters to his family, his wish that his body be used for research went unfulfilled. Instead, he was buried at the Liuzhangli (六張犁) cemetery in Taipei. It was also to the Huang family’s regret that his widow was not able to read her husband’s words of love and sorrow at parting.

EXECUTION

Huang was executed by firing squad soon after Chang’s mother, Huang Chun-lan (黃春蘭), was born, so he never had a chance to see his daughter.

Chang said her family hardly ever mentioned her grandfather during her childhood.

But when she was in senior high school, she came across a sentence in a book her uncle was writing about hypnosis: “My father was executed by the Chinese Nationalist Party [KMT].” It was only then that she realized there was more to her grandfather’s death than she had been told.

Chang tried to get some answers from her family, but all her mother would say was: “He died, that’s all.” After that, Chang decided to try and dig up government files about her father’s case.

Chang knew her grandfather’s full name from her mother’s identification card. While reading A People’s History of the 228 Incident and the White Terror by Lan Po-chou (藍博洲), Chang found an account of her grandfather’s arrest.

EXHIBITION

Two years ago, when the Ministry of Education under the then-Democratic Progresive Party (DPP) administration held an exhibition entitled Farewell, President Chiang [Kai-shek], someone also came across an online copy of a document signed by Chiang ordering Huang Wen-kung’s execution.

Chang found out that her grandfather had originally been sentenced to 15 years in prison, but dictator Chiang changed it to a death sentence at the stroke of a pen.

Last year, when Chen Yunlin (陳雲林), chairman of China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait, visited Taiwan, it brought back memories of the Martial Law era to some, prompting them to post requests for stories about the Martial Law period on Internet bulletin boards.

A post by Chang reads: “Martial law is really not so far away. At the least, my family was affected by it.”

In response to her comment, a student at National Taiwan University wrote her a letter suggesting that she visit the National Archives Administration and ask to view the dossier on her grandfather’s case.

FIVE LETTERS

When Chang opened the more than 300-page file on Huang Wen-kung, she was astonished to find in it five letters written by Huang to his wife, sister and his three children shortly before his death.

“Dear Chun-lan, I was arrested when you were still in your mother’s womb. What a pity that we, father and daughter, can never meet! What could be more tragic than that? Although I have never seen you, held you or kissed you, I love and care for you just the same. I am so sorry that I cannot do my duty as a father, Chun-lan! Can you forgive your poor old dad?” Huang Wen-kung wrote.

“This is the first time in all my 56 years that I have ever felt that my father cared for me and loved me,” said Huang Chun-lan when Chang gave her father’s last letter to her mother, and the first time that Chang heard her mother speak of her feelings for her grandfather.

DYING WORDS

“When I read my grandfather’s dying words, I felt for the first time that he was more than just a name,” Chang said.

“He had feelings, thoughts and a character. He really existed. At last my grandfather began to take on features in my imagination,” Chang said.

Huang Wen-kung’s last letter to his wife shows his boundless love as well as his grief.

“I sincerely hope you will be bold and marry again. If by any chance you don’t meet the right man, I still don’t want you to live a lonely, gray life. I want you to take whatever road you believe will bring you the greatest happiness,” Huang Wen-kung wrote.

Visibly upset, Chang said: “Why didn’t they give his last letters to his family? If my grandmother had received his letter at the time, she might have had a better life.”

Chang said her grandmother started suffering from Alzheimer’s disease more than 10 years ago. She no longer recognizes her children and grandchildren, but continues to look at her identity card every day.

Only later did Chang find out that after her grandfather was arrested, intelligence agents would come around to check at mealtime, three times a day, who was in the house, so the family lived in constant fear.

BODY

Huang also wrote: “Don’t come to claim my body. I want it to be given to the National Taiwan University College of Medicine or another medical training institute. When I was a student, we dissected bodies in practical anatomy classes and learned a great deal of medical knowledge by doing so. If my body can be dissected by students and help them gain a deeper knowledge of medicine, that will be something really meaningful.”

Human rights researchers Tsao Chin-jung (曹欽榮) and Hung Lung-bang (洪隆邦) could not conceal their emotions as they read Huang Wen-kung’s dying wish.

IMPRESSIVE

It was really impressive to read about how a political prisoner 56 years ago cared so much for humankind that he wanted to contribute his “surplus value” — a praiseworthy example compared with today, when medical ethics have become so corrupted, they said.

To piece together the traces of her grandfather’s life, Chang, a research assistant at Academia Sinica, also wrote the dentistry school Huang attended in Japan, and later visited the school herself.

There Chang found out what her grandfather looked like when he was a young man.

From Huang Wen-kung’s admission documents, she learned that the person he most admired was Louis Pasteur, the father of bacteriology.

VISIT

A little while ago, Chang traveled south to Yenchao (燕巢) in Kaohsiung County to visit Lu Biquan (呂碧全), the only other person who was charged in the same case as her grandfather who is still alive today.

From Lu she learned that, when her grandfather was working at the Jihchun Clinic, he also did some research on mushroom cultivation.

Before his death, he told his fellow prisoner his findings on growing mushrooms in the hope that his cellmate would continue the research and make a living from it when he was released from prison.

Political prisoners enriched lives of island residents
　

By Hsieh Wen-hua
STAFF REPORTER
Wednesday, Jul 15, 2009, Page 3
　

They might be unforgivable, vicious insurrectionists in the eyes of dictator Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), but the political prisoners on Green Island played a pivotal role in the local economic, agricultural, medical, educational and cultural development.

The premiere of director Hung Lung-pang's (洪隆邦) documentary film, One Day on Green Island (綠島的一天), at a human rights memorial last Friday offered a rare insight into the close friendship that developed between the island's residents and the prisoners.

Political prisoner Ouyang Wen (歐陽文) said: “We saw topless women when we went ashore, so we thought they were Aborigines.”

The women turned out to be emigrants from Little Liuchiu in Pingtung County and China's Fujian Province who were too poor to buy clothes. They could only take the red clothes offered by fishermen at the Guanyi Temple after a big haul of fish and with the god's permission through divination blocks to cover the lower part of their bodies.

The prison had no walls when the first batch of political prisoners arrived on the island on May 17, 1951.

The officials told the local residents: “You would be colluding with communists if you talk to the prisoners.”

Later, the prisoners collected stones from the sea and built walls to block themselves in.

Because of the strong sea wind and heavy fog, the island's residents could grow nothing but peanuts and yams.

After eating moldy food shipped from Taiwan for more than a year, the officials could not take it anymore. They ordered prisoners who had doctorates in agriculture to form a team and take charge of growing tomatoes, pumpkins, water spinach and other vegetables, while raising turkeys, pigs and sheep at the same time.

They also exchanged vegetables with fish from the local fishermen.

The “Green Island” soybean sauce that the island continues to sell to this day was originally produced by then-prisoner Huang Chung-hua (黃仲華).

Former prisoner Mao Fu-cheng (毛扶正) said that their farming tools, such as sickles and hoes, were all made of melted scrap iron taken from the demolished US passenger liner SS President Hoover ran aground in 1937.

The number of prisoners on Green Island was once as high as 2,000, accounting for two-thirds of the island's total population. More than a dozen were doctors from National Taiwan University Hospital, who asked their families to send equipment and medicine and set up a temporary clinic to treat other prisoners, officials and local residents.

Tien Fen-lai (田份來), a local resident, recalled a woman suffering from difficult labor, with the baby dying in her womb. With the help of the prisoner-doctors, they were able to take out the baby and save the woman's life.

“Many of the prisoners were talented,” said Lin Deng-jung (林登榮), a retired teacher from Green Island Elementary School.

He said that officials once assigned a dozen of the prisoners to teach different subjects at a local elementary school. This boosted the enrolment rate, with 19 of the 20-plus students successfully entering junior high schools in Taiwan. One of the tutors at that time was the famed writer Bo Yang (柏楊).

Some of the prisoners were good at Beijing or Taiwanese opera and Chinese stand-up comedy. They often performed in the local villages.

Chen Meng-he (陳孟和), an art major from National Taiwan Normal University, used native materials that he could find on the island to manufacture violins and guitars, which have been preserved to this day.

Chen was also ordered to take photographs for the prisoners, and family pictures for the local residents at the prison's co-op. Today, the old photos have become rare and precious historical materials.

“The political prisoners' youth was all wasted in Green Island,” the director said, “but they changed the local residents' destiny.”

First victims of a disgraceful law

Wednesday, Jul 15, 2009, Page 8

The Assembly and Parade Act (集會遊行法) has a way of inspiring defiance. When scores of academics and activists stepped forward on Monday to confess to violating the act, it was the latest gesture in what is rapidly becoming a tradition of targeting this legislation with civil disobedience.

Where the law or the actions of authorities run counter to civil and political rights, civil disobedience has a clear role to play, and in this case the strategy is admirable. Peaceful violations of the assembly law have repeatedly highlighted its senselessness.

Activists now have help from unexpected quarters. The indictment of two people under the Act drives home their point: It restricts peaceful expression of dissent and violates the Constitution, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights recently passed by the legislature and signed by President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九).

If anyone thought the Act’s sanctions would be discarded in practice, the indictments were a wake-up call that make repealing the law more urgent.

That was the message of the more than 120 people who symbolically “surrendered” to prosecutors on Monday in a show of support for National Taiwan University sociology professor Lee Ming-tsung (李明璁) and Taiwan Association for Human Rights chairman Lin Chia-fan (林佳範), who have been charged with organizing demonstrations without permits.

When the Wild Strawberry Student Movement announced it would mobilize around 1,000 people last December to protest without a permit in front of the Presidential Office, it was unclear how the authorities would react. The event was intended as a challenge to the assembly law and organizers gave a week’s notice. The rally was peaceful and the organizers, who made no attempt to hide their identities, and participants did not face sanctions.

Yet, six months later, Lee was indicted over a separate Wild Strawberry protest held one month earlier during the visit to Taiwan by Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林). Lin, meanwhile, was charged with helping organize a demonstration without a permit in front of the legislature.

Another show of defiance was organized by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) on May 17, when it staged a 24-hour sit-in to protest the assembly law. Amid vague warnings from the Taipei City Government, the DPP, like the Wild Strawberries, warned the authorities in turn that it would not seek a permit for its demonstration.

For months, the debate around the assembly law has focused on a Cabinet-proposed amendment stalled in the legislature. Judicial reform advocates say the proposal, which the Executive Yuan claims would bring the law into line with human rights standards, is at best a show and at worst reinforces restrictions on freedom of assembly. With the support of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus, the amendment is expected to pass, despite the delay.

But now the focus is squarely on prosecutors. Are more indictments in the works, or can they proceed with the selective indictment of Lee and Lin without a serious backlash and further discrediting of the judiciary?

Either way, their actions will demonstrate the need to overhaul, if not scrap, a disgraceful law.

Why 2012 will be a deadly deadline
　

By J. Michael Cole 寇謐將
Wednesday, Jul 15, 2009, Page 8

At no time since the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government fled to Taiwan has the Chinese Communist Party been so close to accomplishing its objective of annexing Taiwan.

Rather than achieve this through threat of force or diplomatic pressure, Beijing is using economic integration — a process launched soon after President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) came to office last year — to reel Taiwan in.

Through three rounds of talks between the Straits Exchange Foundation and the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait, direct cross-strait charter flights, increased Chinese tourism, large purchases of Taiwanese electronics by Chinese corporations and direct investment in 100 industries in Taiwan’s manufacturing, services and public infrastructure sectors, China has successfully increased Taiwan’s dependence on its economy.

Despite the Ma government’s claims to the contrary, a proposed economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) between Taiwan and China would only exacerbate that dependence by forcing all of Taiwan’s exports to ASEAN countries to pass through China, thus killing Taiwan’s chances of striking bilateral trade agreements with countries in that bloc — the very kind of market diversification that Taiwan should be aiming for.

As Taiwan inexorably drifts into China’s sphere of influence, politicians and academics around the world have hailed Ma’s policy, calling him a “masterful” politician who is not only “saving” Taiwan’s struggling economy, but more importantly, defusing tensions in the Taiwan Strait and creating the conditions for a peace agreement.

Amid enthusiasm for Ma’s “pragmatic” policymaking, the apprehensions of millions of people who fear for their livelihoods and the future of their country have been ignored, as has the fact that poll after poll has shown high levels of dissatisfaction with the Ma administration for its failure, among other things, to meet election promises and to halt the erosion of democracy.

Over and over again, experts and foreign media have portrayed the Taiwanese independence movement and the majority of Taiwanese who want to maintain a political “status quo” on the question of unification as immature throwbacks of the Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) administrations whose political agendas supposedly risk war with China.

Very few China and Taiwan “experts” have asked why the Lee and Chen administrations acted the way they did, and an equally small number seem to have bothered to explore the local political impact of Ma’s pro-China policies — or, for that matter, what the consequences would be should his plans be sidetracked.

Lee — a statesman of a standing that Ma could never match — and Chen were childish, irrational and dangerous because they were more cautious and patient in their engagement with China. Ma, on the other hand, has plunged in head first, and for this he is being called mature.

As economic integration intensifies, we are hearing calls for cross-strait talks on more convoluted political matters, which, despite Taipei’s claim to proceeding cautiously on that front, are inevitable given that Beijing has already made it clear that it sees economic integration as a stepping stone to political integration.

But few experts have asked what a “peace” agreement between Taipei and Beijing entails, namely Taiwan’s capitulation and admission that it is part of China. If things continue apace, it is possible that a few years from now Beijing will accomplish its objective by “peaceful” means — peaceful in the sense of a hostile corporate takeover.

Only recently have specialists started asking why, if things are going so well in the Strait, should China continue to modernize its military and expand its arsenal with equipment at least partly intended for a Taiwan contingency, including increasingly accurate short-range missiles?

What some experts fail to see is that by celebrating cross-strait detente of the kind initiated by the Ma administration and its counterpart in Beijing, and by deliberately ignoring the very substantial opposition that existed and is now growing within Taiwan, they are helping to create the conditions for a conflict in the not-so-distant future that could be far more serious than anything seen before — one that would almost inevitably involve deadly force.

Unless political dissent in Taiwan can be smothered, democratic forces could threaten to derail Ma’s efforts, especially as more controversial aspects of cross-strait exchanges grow nearer. And the principal threat will not be referendums on an ECFA or public protests, but the 2012 presidential election.

Despite its lack of experience with democracy, Beijing is aware of the threat of electoral retribution in Taiwan, which could bring into office a pro-independence party or a KMT administration that is not as pliant as Ma’s. At the least, legislative elections could correct the imbalance that the Ma administration has enjoyed since it came to power and weaken the KMT’s control of the executive and legislative branches, which is part of the reason why Ma has been able to ignore calls for caution, transparency and accountability in his China policy.

As such, Beijing is probably calculating that if it is to succeed in annexing Taiwan, it must do so before 2012. We can expect pressure to build very soon for accelerated economic integration and for political matters to be put on the agenda of cross-strait talks.

In this light, it is easier to explain why cross-strait detente has not been accompanied by an expected military drawdown on Beijing’s part. In fact, 2012 will not be much different from the 1996 elections, when the Chinese military fired missiles off Taiwan’s major ports to influence the country’s first free presidential elections. Back then, Beijing was sending the signal that if Taiwanese voted for Lee, they were choosing war — a threat that, as history showed, was hollow given the power disparity between China on one side and the US and Taiwan on the other.

This time around, however, after more than a decade of major investment in its military and new weapons systems, such as second-generation nuclear submarines and anti-ship ballistic missiles, Beijing is in a much better position to intimidate not only Taiwan but also the US, should it feel compelled to dispatch carrier battle groups to or near the Strait amid tensions.

During the presidential election campaign in 2011 and early 2012 the KMT could also exploit public fears of renewed tensions with Beijing to its advantage and accuse its opponents of risking war. A divided polity will by that time face a choice between irreversible political annexation or military attack.

Another factor that makes 2012 such a dangerous time in the Strait — especially if there is a possibility of the KMT suffering defeat — is Beijing’s awareness that time is not on its side, and that the longer Taiwan remains separate from China, the further Taiwanese identity will consolidate and more so under a pro-independence government.

Just as dangerous would be Beijing sensing that it had come close to realizing its dream of annexation only to see the chance slip as the result of a democratic process. Chances are that rather than admit defeat, it would use force to complete its agenda, an option all the more attractive given the cuts the Ma administration has made to the defense establishment.

To experts looking in from the outside, Ma may appear to be a masterful and pragmatic politician, but by refusing to address the concerns of a majority of Taiwanese, and by undermining democracy in his pursuit of what he sees as a sacred mission, Ma is sowing the seeds for disaster.

By hailing Ma as a hero yet failing to understand the dynamics within Taiwan, and by neglecting to challenge him to act more democratically, all that the experts are doing is increasing the probability that 2012 will augur a grave threat to peace in the Taiwan Strait.

J. Michael Cole is a writer based in Taipei and the author of Democracy in Peril: Taiwan’s Struggle for Survival from Chen Shui-bian to Ma Ying-jeou.

Facing the darkness by saving a memorial
　

By Taiwan Historical Association 台灣歷史學會
Wednesday, Jul 15, 2009, Page 8

‘How can the government unscrupulously distort and trample all over the historical meaning of the site?’

During the Martial Law era, the Jingmei military detention center was notorious for violating the human rights of its numerous political prisoners.

Now known as the Human Rights Jingmei Memorial Park, the Council for Cultural Affairs this year decided to rename the former detention center Jingmei Culture Park and renovate certain buildings to allow artistic and cultural groups to use the space.

The Jingmei detention center witnessed the unbearable darkness of the White Terror era — which followed on the heels of the Chinese Civil War — in which many people were detained and jailed for most of their lives.

How can the government unscrupulously distort and trample all over the historical meaning of the site?

The memorial park should be preserved to highlight the significance of human rights rather than be decorated and embellished as a cultural park.

More importantly, not only should the name be changed back to the Human Rights Jingmei Memorial Park, but the government also needs to face Taiwan’s history through concrete action.

The relevant authorities should conduct a thorough survey of the site in working toward establishing a national museum, together with accompanying legislation.

The government should then open the site to school trips for civic studies and awareness of history.

The preservation of the site should be part of efforts to prevent human rights violations from happening again.

President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) recently signed the Act Governing Execution of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (公民與政治權利國際公約及經濟社會文化權利國際公約施行法), but this does not mean that there has been improvement in human rights protection in Taiwan.

The government must act, lest it end up being no different from the regime of dictator Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), who froze the Constitution and encroached on human rights.

If the government only pays lip service to protection of human rights, the constitutional meaning of its behavior would be no different to that of Chiang when he declared Dec. 25 Constitution Day. This would be most ironic.

It is unwise to issue noble statements about the White Terror while refusing to learn its lessons, just as it is unacceptable to ignore the history of human rights violations while behaving in like manner.

It is also cowardly to fear admitting to historical mistakes and trying to cover up the truth.

An unwise, malicious and cowardly government is neither qualified nor capable of leading a people.

We call on the government to preserve the Human Rights Jingmei Memorial Park, push through legislation protecting human rights and establish a national human rights memorial hall at the site.

In addition, we emphasize that only by facing the darkness of history can we embrace a bright future.