President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) says he has no problem with changing the “permit system” in the Assembly and Parade Law (集會遊行法) to a “notification system” because the problem does not lie in the system but in the use of violence at protests.
How could violence be the problem?
No one disputes the fact that whoever commits violence should be punished in accordance with the law.
During Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait Chairman Chen Yunlin’s (陳雲林) five-day visit, the government abused its power and suppressed the public’s constitutionally protected rights of expression and assembly, leading citizens to fear that democracy in Taiwan was coming to an end.
Will the government eliminate the Taiwanese elite through blanket judicial oppression and other direct or indirect means? Will it create an atmosphere of terror reminiscent of the era of White Terror under dictators Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) and Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國)? Will it frighten the Taiwanese into accepting China’s goal of annexing Taiwan?
Does Ma really understand what democracy is? As he emphasizes his respect for the Constitution, does he understand that it essentially is a law that protects human rights?
Does he know that sovereignty rests with the people, that they are the masters of this land and that the legitimacy of government authority comes from public consent?
Does he know that the basic human rights upheld by the Constitution are absolute rights that can only be restricted under extraordinary circumstances of clear and present danger?
These concepts of freedom have grown deep roots since they appeared during the European Enlightenment in the 18th Century.
It is also a fundamental value of democratic societies that democracy cannot be suppressed by social factors.
However, Ma says that “any system is negotiable as long as there is no violence,” or, in other words, as long as there is violence, no system is negotiable.
What is the difference between him and the democratically elected Adolf Hitler, who established his authoritarian rule in the name of anti-communism? Democracy is the most fundamental value, and it must never be abandoned or sacrificed.
In the book, A Theory of Justice, US political philosopher John Rawls argues that the first principle of justice is that human and political rights are priority rights that must never be removed for any reason.
Ma is now threatening to abolish the public’s constitutional rights. He is unaware that he does not have the power to treat human rights as a gift to be given to those who do as they are told.
Some Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators have echoed Ma, saying that an amendment to the Assembly and Parade Law must focus on maintaining social stability and public order.
Almost everyone in the Ma government believes that they need to restrict constitutionally enshrined human rights in the name of security and order.
This shows that Ma and his party are every bit as authoritarian as they used to be under the Chiang family. Taiwan’s democratic reform over the past 20 years has not changed them.
They still believe in this authoritarian ideology. Indeed, Taiwan’s democracy is in dire straits. I’m afraid that our efforts against the “blue terror” may be insufficient to stop it.
Over the next few years, if Ma does not stop before it is too late, street riots may become a fixture in Taiwan as the general public tries to safeguard its democracy.
Ma must not kill Taiwan’s democracy.
Allen Houng is the director of the Institute of Philosophy of Mind and Cognition at National Yang Ming University.
TRANSLATED BY EDDY CHANG
When Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) sits down with US President Donald Trump in Beijing on Thursday next week, Xi is unlikely to demand a dramatic public betrayal of Taiwan. He does not need to. Beijing’s preferred victory is smaller, quieter and in some ways far more dangerous: a subtle shift in American wording that appears technical, but carries major strategic meaning. The ask is simple: replace the longstanding US formulation that Washington “does not support Taiwan independence” with a harder one — that Washington “opposes” Taiwan independence. One word changes; a deterrence structure built over decades begins to shift.
The cancelation this week of President William Lai’s (賴清德) state visit to Eswatini, after the Seychelles, Madagascar and Mauritius revoked overflight permits under Chinese pressure, is one more measure of Taiwan’s shrinking executive diplomatic space. Another channel that deserves attention keeps growing while the first contracts. For several years now, Taipei has been one of Europe’s busiest legislative destinations. Where presidents and foreign ministers cannot land, parliamentarians do — and they do it in rising numbers. The Italian parliament opened the year with its largest bipartisan delegation to Taiwan to date: six Italian deputies and one senator, drawn from six
Recently, Taipei’s streets have been plagued by the bizarre sight of rats running rampant and the city government’s countermeasures have devolved into an anti-intellectual farce. The Taipei Parks and Street Lights Office has attempted to eradicate rats by filling their burrows with polyurethane foam, seeming to believe that rats could not simply dig another path out. Meanwhile, as the nation’s capital slowly deteriorates into a rat hive, the Taipei Department of Environmental Protection has proudly pointed to the increase in the number of poisoned rats reported in February and March as a sign of success. When confronted with public concerns over young
Taipei is facing a severe rat infestation, and the city government is reportedly considering large-scale use of rodenticides as its primary control measure. However, this move could trigger an ecological disaster, including mass deaths of birds of prey. In the past, black kites, relatives of eagles, took more than three decades to return to the skies above the Taipei Basin. Taiwan’s black kite population was nearly wiped out by the combined effects of habitat destruction, pesticides and rodenticides. By 1992, fewer than 200 black kites remained on the island. Fortunately, thanks to more than 30 years of collective effort to preserve their remaining
RSS