Last Sunday we ran a story about the government's new anti-terrorism bill which will institute the death penalty for those found guilty of engaging in acts of terrorism. The following day we ran a story entitled "Laws drafted to end death penalty, legalize gay unions," which carried the subhead "The Cabinet and Presidential Office are working on a proposal that officials said would protect basic human rights."
The contradiction is obvious. The explanation is not. According to the government, getting rid of the death penalty is a long-term goal which has to be brought about slowly and cautiously to gain public acceptance. But anti-terrorism legislation is needed now and it is suitable that this most serious of crimes should carry the most serious of penalties on the books.
This piffle raises two questions: Does Taiwan need anti-terrorism legislation? And if so should it invoke the death penalty?
We can understand why countries faced with terrorist threats need anti-terrorism legislation. But it is an almost universal experience that the kind of measures that are invoked by such legislation, depending as it does on the government's spying on ordinary citizens, is always an affront to what are now regarded as basic civil liberties. Naturally, where a genuine terrorist threat exists, this is accepted as the price that has to be paid for safety. But given the damage to civil liberties and human rights that anti-terrorism legislation can bring about, there should be sufficient reason to believe that a threat might exist, a "sufficient" reason because, frankly, the fact that terrorist acts happen to others is not a reason in itself to expect them to happen here. Taiwan is not a party to the issues behind the "global war on terror," -- except, like almost every other nation, in the uttering of platitudes. Taiwan has never experienced terrorism in the sense in which the new law defines it. Nor has the government presented any evidence to show that there is a credible threat. Al-Qaeda is not a threat to Taiwan. So who is, such that we need legislation to counter it?
This is of special concern in a country where democracy and the rule of law are less well established. The kind of powers, of surveillance and snooping, that the anti-terrorism legislation permits are powers that in Taiwan in living memory were used with impunity against the Taiwanese by their own government. Any government should have to show a good case for doing anything that poses a threat to civil liberties, but in a country like Taiwan, where state power has been abused for so long, that case should be especially compelling. The government's isn't.
Then there is the question of why the death penalty. Amongst advanced democracies only the US retains the death penalty; Britain fought Irish republican terrorism for 30 years without it. Surely if the government has the intention of abolishing the death penalty the first thing it might do is not to put any more capital crimes on the books.
But perhaps the government is playing with us. Knowing that there is no terrorist threat in Taiwan, the new legislation is a public relations gesture to the US. According to this way of thinking, since there are no terrorists here, let us threaten to hang, draw and quarter them and hang their body parts from the city gates if it will make our American friends look upon us as more reliable allies.
The problem is that once the law is there it can be used. And it is not necessarily the case that it will be used well. A blue camp government trying to force reunification down Taiwanese throats might well invoke such legislation to crush anti-unification activists, just as anti-communist zeal was used to justify repressing the pro-democracy activists of a generation ago. Is this something that we want to risk, just for the sake of toadying to the US?
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