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EDITORIAL: A serious
warning from Hong Kong
As those who care about such matters take a moment to commemorate the 24th
anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, an incident in Hong Kong on Monday
was a reminder of just how fragile freedom is, of how vulnerable it is to those
who would cage it for their own selfish interests.
Just as he was leaving his office in Hong Kong¡¦s Chai Wan district, Chen Ping
(³¯¥), the 58-year-old billionaire publisher of the political weekly iSun
Affairs, was assaulted by two baton-wielding thugs in their 20s or 30s,
sustaining injuries to his head, arms and chest, and requiring hospitalization.
An investigation has been launched and it is not known who was behind the
attack, but one can guess.
Just 12 when the Cultural Revolution was unleashed upon China, Chen was beaten
and detained for comparing former Chinese leader Mao Zedong (¤ò¿AªF) ¡X the
architect of the madness ¡X to an ¡§emperor¡¨ and a ¡§tyrant.¡¨ He was also branded
the offspring of a ¡§Soviet revisionist rebel¡¨ after his father, a military
expert within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), was captured by Soviet forces.
After being ¡§rehabilitated,¡¨ Chen worked as a businessman and as a researcher at
a government policy think tank, but left all that after the events at Tiananmen
in 1989.
He once said in an interview that those experiences had a strong influence on
his desire to promote democratic change in China, and were behind his decision
last year to launch iSun Affairs, which quickly built a reputation as a
hard-hitting critic of Beijing and of the self-censorship that now haunts Hong
Kong media as it courts the rich and powerful in Beijing (the weekly will turn
into an online-only monthly publication later this year).
Needless to say, the weekly, which is also distributed in Taiwan, Macau and
Malaysia, is banned in China, as is Chen¡¦s TV channel, Sun TV. An issue of the
magazine in December last year, which showed the heart-wrenching scene of a
Tibetan man setting himself ablaze, highlighted the extent to which Chen was
willing to criticize the Chinese government. His reporters, some of whom are
veteran journalists based in China, have faced harassment by state security
authorities, and his chief editor was denied a visa to work in Hong Kong.
June 3, about 6pm, and Chen is assailed. A coincidence, or a random act?
Perhaps, but given how China treats ¡X or mistreats, that is ¡X freedom of
expression, one can be forgiven for assuming the worst: that the attack was
politically motivated and an attempt to silence a man of means who stands up to
the CCP.
It is a stark reminder, one day ahead of the anniversary of the state-sponsored
atrocity, that the CCP and its cronies in the much freer territory will stop at
nothing to muzzle those who refuse to be co-opted and who continue to fight for
liberty, freedom and the democracy that has long eluded the Chinese.
As Taiwan continues to deepen its interactions with China, its freedom-loving
people must keep a close eye on what goes on in places like Hong Kong and China,
as the fate of individuals like Chen is, like it or not, increasingly tied to
that of each and every one of the 23 million Taiwanese. Twenty-four years after
Tiananmen, the butchers of Beijing, as one former US president once referred to
them, remain relentless in their willingness to crush dissent both at home and,
increasingly, in the near-abroad.
Those who gave their lives for the cause of freedom must not be forgotten, and
those who, like Chen and many others across China and here in Taiwan, continue
to do so.
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