The letter from the Taiwanese Canadian Social Service Center (Letters, June 4, page 8) on the fostering of a strong Taiwanese consciousness was very disturbing, for the examples the writers used were all from extremely fascist societies: Germany, Poland and Ukraine.
Further the article acknowledged a "cultural debt" to China and Japan, which are both extremely fascist societies with authoritarian cultures. The idea that Taiwanese identity owes a cultural debt in a positive sense to China or Japan is questionable. Indeed the negative aspects of those cultures remain quite strong in Taiwan.
For example, the president had no difficulty ordering official disobedience in the face of the unconstitutional March 19 Shooting Truth Investigation Special Committee Statute, because it was politically expedient to do so.
There is no reason why the government should not also choose to regard the unconstitutional provisions of the Household Registration Act's mandatory national fingerprinting requirements as ineffective from the get-go.
The government wrongly, unconstitutionally and arrogantly believes that anything they feel is in the public interest may lawfully override the rights and provisions of the Constitution. Another example of fascism in Taiwan is the household registration system, enforced by authoritarian Asian societies to this day. The police and the state do not have the right to regard average citizens carrying out their daily lives as criminals.
The fascist aspects of the Chinese and Japanese negative cultural vestiges on Taiwan must be uprooted and overturned. The battle for Taiwanese independence is the battle for the respect of the human rights of all persons of Asian and Pacific Island heritage.
But until the people of Taiwan themselves stand up and reject the fascist and Chinese cultural origins of much of their Taiwanese independence movement, including those such as Lin Cho-shui (
Profound respect for such individuality is not only conducive to stronger social cohesion, it is essential to achieving just and equitable social welfare and charity, something almost entirely lacking from Taiwan's dog-eat-dog, get rich at all costs Chinese cultural mentality.
First there was The Ugly American, then there was Bo Yang's (
Further, those fascists who engaged in crimes against humanity on Formosa for decades from the 228 Incident through the White Terror must be brought to justice for their crimes against humanity.
The claims of Taiwanese independence advocates in the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) who desire to make peace with the fascist Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) members, and refuse to employ the judicial resources of the state to bring the fascists to justice, in the name of "cultural, ethnic and national origin reconciliation" are absurd and immoral to the core.
One does not reconcile with fascist murderers: one brings them to justice. When Taiwan is just and dedicated to justice, then and only then will it merit the recognition of its true identity as a free and independent, sovereign people, living freely and independently in their own state. The hypocrisy of anything less is obvious, and will stain forever the claims of those who seek a just recognition of their equal humanity as a nation among the states of the world.
Paul Maas Risenhoover
Special Adviser for International Law, Permanent Mission of Tuvalu to the UN
Jan. 1 marks a decade since China repealed its one-child policy. Just 10 days before, Peng Peiyun (彭珮雲), who long oversaw the often-brutal enforcement of China’s family-planning rules, died at the age of 96, having never been held accountable for her actions. Obituaries praised Peng for being “reform-minded,” even though, in practice, she only perpetuated an utterly inhumane policy, whose consequences have barely begun to materialize. It was Vice Premier Chen Muhua (陳慕華) who first proposed the one-child policy in 1979, with the endorsement of China’s then-top leaders, Chen Yun (陳雲) and Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平), as a means of avoiding the
As the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) races toward its 2027 modernization goals, most analysts fixate on ship counts, missile ranges and artificial intelligence. Those metrics matter — but they obscure a deeper vulnerability. The true future of the PLA, and by extension Taiwan’s security, might hinge less on hardware than on whether the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) can preserve ideological loyalty inside its own armed forces. Iran’s 1979 revolution demonstrated how even a technologically advanced military can collapse when the social environment surrounding it shifts. That lesson has renewed relevance as fresh unrest shakes Iran today — and it should
The last foreign delegation Nicolas Maduro met before he went to bed Friday night (January 2) was led by China’s top Latin America diplomat. “I had a pleasant meeting with Qiu Xiaoqi (邱小琪), Special Envoy of President Xi Jinping (習近平),” Venezuela’s soon-to-be ex-president tweeted on Telegram, “and we reaffirmed our commitment to the strategic relationship that is progressing and strengthening in various areas for building a multipolar world of development and peace.” Judging by how minutely the Central Intelligence Agency was monitoring Maduro’s every move on Friday, President Trump himself was certainly aware of Maduro’s felicitations to his Chinese guest. Just
In the US’ National Security Strategy (NSS) report released last month, US President Donald Trump offered his interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine. The “Trump Corollary,” presented on page 15, is a distinctly aggressive rebranding of the more than 200-year-old foreign policy position. Beyond reasserting the sovereignty of the western hemisphere against foreign intervention, the document centers on energy and strategic assets, and attempts to redraw the map of the geopolitical landscape more broadly. It is clear that Trump no longer sees the western hemisphere as a peaceful backyard, but rather as the frontier of a new Cold War. In particular,
RSS