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
When Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping (習近平) wakes up one morning and decides that his People’s Liberation Army (PLA) can win a war to conquer Taiwan, that is when his war will begin. To ensure that Xi never gains that confidence it is now necessary for the United States to shed any notions of “forbearance” in arms sales to Taiwan. Largely because they could guarantee military superiority on the Taiwan Strait, US administrations from Jimmy Carter to Barack Obama practiced “forbearance” — pre-emptive limitation of arms sales to Taiwan — in hopes of gaining diplomatic leverage with Beijing. President Ronald
As the US marks one month under the leadership of President Joe Biden, the conversations around Taiwan have shifted. As I discussed in a Taipei Times article (“No more talk of ‘bargaining chips,’” Jan. 30, page 8), with the end of former US president Donald Trump’s administration — and all of the unpredictability associated with it — Taiwan would not have to worry about being used as a “bargaining chip” in some sort of deal with the People’s Republic of China. The talk of Taiwan being used as a bargaining chip never subsided over those four years, but under Biden, those
The Canadian parliament on Monday passed a motion saying that China’s human rights abuses against the country’s Uighur Muslim population in Xinjiang constitute “genocide.” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has so far avoided using the word genocide in regard to Xinjiang, but if he did, it would begin to generate solidarity among G7 nations on the issue — which is something Trudeau has called for. Former US president Donald Trump used the word genocide regarding Xinjiang before leaving office last month, and members of US President Joe Biden’s administration have been pushing for him to make the same declaration, a Reuters report
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lin Wei-chou (林為洲) talked about “opposing the Chinese Communist Party [CCP]” in a recent Facebook post, writing that opposing the CCP is not the special reserve of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Not long after, many people within the KMT received a mysterious letter signed “Chinese Nationalist Party Central Committee” containing what looked like a declaration of opposition to, and a call to arms against, the CCP. Unexpectedly, the KMT’s Culture and Communications Committee came forward with a clarification, saying that the letter was not sent by the KMT and telling the public not to believe
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