The security measures that the Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) government has implemented for the arrival of Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林) must be awakening a sense of dread in anyone old enough to have lived in the Martial Law era under dictator Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石).
In fact, so ostentatious was the presence of police and National Security Bureau officers at critical venues along Chen’s path from Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport to the Grand Hotel in Shilin (士林) that the Chinese envoy must have felt right at home.
The Ma administration’s argument that such measures were the direct consequence of the Democratic Progressive Party’s “mobbing” of ARATS Vice Chairman Zhang Mingqing (張銘清) in Tainan last week is obfuscation, as police are not only protecting the envoy but also muzzling freedom of speech by forbidding people from displaying the national flag, banners with political content or symbols of Chinese oppression, such as the Tibetan flag.
What’s even more worrying is that the security apparatus seems to have quickly reverted to the random, unclear rules upon which authoritarian regimes depend to keep their opponents on edge. In other words, while the government tells Taiwanese not to fret over the meetings, it has unleashed the tool of fear to unbalance detractors. Days ahead of Chen’s arrival, demonstrators didn’t know whether they would be arrested for activities that in the past two decades did not constitute breaking the law.
Barbed wire at key intersections, demonstrators manhandled by police without cause, a young woman’s finger broken as police pried a Tibetan flag from her hands and arrested her — this is the stuff of news in China, not Taiwan.
After years of democratization and transformation of the security apparatus into an instrument of the state rather than the private army of a political party, officers that a year ago could not have imagined themselves doing the things that they did yesterday have become a tool of state oppression.
The great British thinker Bertrand Russell, who had a lifelong interest in the uses of power, once referred to a phenomenon that could be summed up as the “anonymity of the flock,” in which the individual is capable of committing actions that are out of character because of the “deresponsibilization” that the context provides them. Being part of an organization — especially in the security apparatus — weakens one’s moral barriers and allows for the perpetration of unspeakable acts. A police officer is merely following orders and doing his job, which he could lose if he refused to comply with directives from the top.
When this happens, otherwise decent human beings are capable of just about anything.
Taiwan hasn’t reached the extremes of this phenomenon, but the seeds are there and the leadership — the moral compass in any institution — has shown its willingness to use force against its own people, assaulting a harmless 34-year-old woman in the process. And yesterday was only the first day of Chen’s visit.
The pendulum of freedom cannot be allowed to swing back in a direction that has caused this nation so much suffering in the past.
Elbridge Colby, America’s Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, is the most influential voice on defense strategy in the Second Trump Administration. For insight into his thinking, one could do no better than read his thoughts on the defense of Taiwan which he gathered in a book he wrote in 2021. The Strategy of Denial, is his contemplation of China’s rising hegemony in Asia and on how to deter China from invading Taiwan. Allowing China to absorb Taiwan, he wrote, would open the entire Indo-Pacific region to Chinese preeminence and result in a power transition that would place America’s prosperity
When Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) first suggested a mass recall of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators, the Taipei Times called the idea “not only absurd, but also deeply undemocratic” (“Lai’s speech and legislative chaos,” Jan. 6, page 8). In a subsequent editorial (“Recall chaos plays into KMT hands,” Jan. 9, page 8), the paper wrote that his suggestion was not a solution, and that if it failed, it would exacerbate the enmity between the parties and lead to a cascade of revenge recalls. The danger came from having the DPP orchestrate a mass recall. As it transpired,
A few weeks ago in Kaohsiung, tech mogul turned political pundit Robert Tsao (曹興誠) joined Western Washington University professor Chen Shih-fen (陳時奮) for a public forum in support of Taiwan’s recall campaign. Kaohsiung, already the most Taiwanese independence-minded city in Taiwan, was not in need of a recall. So Chen took a different approach: He made the case that unification with China would be too expensive to work. The argument was unusual. Most of the time, we hear that Taiwan should remain free out of respect for democracy and self-determination, but cost? That is not part of the usual script, and
All 24 Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers and suspended Hsinchu Mayor Ann Kao (高虹安), formerly of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), survived recall elections against them on Saturday, in a massive loss to the unprecedented mass recall movement, as well as to the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) that backed it. The outcome has surprised many, as most analysts expected that at least a few legislators would be ousted. Over the past few months, dedicated and passionate civic groups gathered more than 1 million signatures to recall KMT lawmakers, an extraordinary achievement that many believed would be enough to remove at
RSS