Letters

Last Wednesday, Oct. 6, was a sad night for Taiwan. Eight convicts were executed under a flawed law. What does this mean for Taiwanese society? Not too much apparently -- as silence was the general response.

I do not mean that these people were innocent; that judgement belongs to the judicial system. But killing eight people in a swift government action looks more like manslaughter than justice.

The aim of justice is to punish crimes and try to rehabilitate the person (we must not forget that even criminals are human beings) for society, if possible. Capital punishment is the recognition that a society has failed: it is unable to offer reconciliation and conversion.

The saddest part of this story was the silence in the media. From much of the coverage, it looked like only Chen Chin-hsing (3祖鷟3) was executed. Of Taiwan's English-language press, it seems that only the Taipei Times noted that eight people were executed and called them "bandits" with a touch of irony. It was the only one that criticized this Mininstry of Justice action in its "A cynical misuse of power" editorial. Is Taiwan's English press a "cute lamb" that reports only what the shepherds want?

Also silence from religious and humanitarian institutions. In the USA, one execution draws attention from around the country, and even from the world. World leaders, even the Pope, write letters asking for clemency. Now, we have eight people executed on that "silent night:" doesn't anyone light a candle for them, say a prayer, ask for mercy, oppose the executions? Is Taiwanese society, too, a little selfish lamb that does not care about anything unless it hurts me, only me? I read the Taipei Times everyday, but before the executions, not much was said to raise social awareness on this issue.

There are three others who might face death: the Hsichih Trio. I know them and they say that their confessions were obtained under torture, which is more than possible. They have been about ten years in jail, since they were aprehended at age eighteen. If you go to any Taiwanese university, pick up a freshman, put him in custody and begin to beat him, he will confess to anything. I know through a policeman friend that even today beating is quite common in police stations. Usually beaten people do not sue the police, he told me, maybe for fear, maybe for face (-?l). When the wolves come, the lambs just hope not to be the one who is caught.

Everyone of us is a small lamb and keeping us silent is the most powerful tool of the government, any government. Some media practice the most horrible form of censorship, self-censorship. We can keep silent forever and pray, like the lambs, that it will be others -- not me and my friends and family -- who suffer unfairness, who are beaten, who disappear in a navy boat as if by "magic," who are executed to appease the thirst for blood and revenge of the population. True justice is motivated by reason and logic, rights and ethics, not by feelings. The Nazis began to control German society through fear, self-imposed silence, censorship and media propaganda. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Christian theologian of the Nazi era, said this about those times:

"One day the police came, and took away the neighbors above my house, but I didn't say anything because they were Jews and I was not. The next week they came and took the ones on the left, but I didn't say anything because they were homosexuals and I was not. The next week they came and took away the ones on the right, but I did not say anything because they were gypsies, and I was not. Yesterday they came and took me, but it was too late to say anything, and no one said anything on my behalf, because they were not me."