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EDITORIAL: Civil
disobedience in the making
Draped on their shoulders were banners with the slogan: “Serving jail terms with
pride. No regrets at all,” as labor rights activists Mao Chen-fei (毛振飛) and Lin
Tzu-wen (林子文) reported to the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office on Friday last
week over their lead roles in clashes with police at an egg-hurling protest last
year.
Escorted by hundreds of supporters in a parade from the Ketagalan Boulevard to
the prosecutors’ office, with fireworks set off for “celebration,” there was no
expression of sorrow or regret on the pair’s faces.
Lin, a long-time labor activist who was sentenced to a 50-day prison term, said
that all he felt was pride, while Mao, chairman of the Taoyuan Confederation of
Trade Unions, said that he felt honored to be jailed.
Lawyer Tseng Wei-kai (曾威凱) volunteered to represent an unidentified woman who
was recently subpoenaed by the prosecutors for allegedly throwing a shoe at
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) on Oct. 20, telling the woman that she did not have
to worry about any fee because “you paid the legal fee the moment you threw the
shoes.”
Student movement leaders Chen Wei-ting (陳為廷) and Lin Fei-fang (林飛帆), who have
been no strangers to subpoenas over the past year, said they “could not wait to
be subpoenaed,” so they would have an opportunity to explain the protests they
organized.
After a 20-hour “occupation” of a government building in August to protest land
expropriation in Miaoli County that was dubbed an illegal protest by
authorities, thousands of people who participated in the event turned themselves
in and demanded to be investigated by the police in an online campaign.
These cases brought to mind the 1980s and early 1990s, when democracy advocates
were sent to prison and people showered them with support, praise and financial
aid.
In the so-called “Neo Formosa Weekly case” (蓬萊島案), for example, former president
Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), who was a Taipei City councilor at the time, former
minister of the interior Lee Yi-yang (李逸洋) and Huang Tien-fu (黃天福) were each
given a one-year jail term for defaming then-Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)
member Elmer Fung (馮滬祥) in a story published by Neo Formosa Weekly, where the
three served as executives.
Thousands of people attended the seven farewell speeches nationwide, organized
to voice support for the three, who subsequently earned the nickname of “Three
Gentlemen of Neo Formosa,” while the trio staged the same kind of parade as Mao
and Lin on the day they reported to prison in 1986, wearing the banners bearing
the slogan “going to prison with pride.”
When Taiwanese break the law and are proud of it, something is terribly wrong.
What was wrong during the 1970s and 1980s was the authoritarian rule of the
then-KMT regime.
Now, perhaps people have resorted to these actions because they feel they have
exhausted all other means to make Ma and his administration listen to what they
have to say, making necessary such “extreme and violent” measures — according to
Ma’s definition — as throwing shoes at the president, throwing eggs at the
police and occupying a government building.
That was particularly the case after the failure of a no-confidence motion
against the Cabinet following the “September strife,” with KMT lawmakers
sticking to the party line, rather than bowing to mainstream public opinion
about the Ma administration’s incompetence.
A movement of civil disobedience, which is not motivated or mobilized by the
opposition parties, appears to be in the making. It is not opposition parties,
but people power that are likely to give Ma pause for the remainder of his term.
And judging from the example of Mao and Lin, he should be very afraid.
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