The more one looks at it, the clearer it becomes that the Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) administration’s “peace” bid with Beijing is all about The Process.
Participants in this endeavor are so fixed on the goal, so enthralled by the historic possibilities, that anything that departs from The Process or threatens to throw it off course is met with the swift blade of the state apparatus. What we are presented with, therefore, is a classic case of the end justifying the means.
When a state embraces such an ideology, the little man inevitably gets trampled on, as we saw in the former Soviet Union, Mao Zedong’s (毛澤東) China and under other undemocratic systems. Under such conditions, the state, believing it knows what is best for the citizenry, will not hesitate to abrogate people’s rights or, at the extreme, to use the tool of terror, which leads to untold abuse. There’s a word for this: authoritarianism.
There are indications — police brutality, infringements on people’s rights and the ostensible politicization of the judiciary — that the Ma administration is veering toward authoritarianism in its quest to achieve “peace” in the Taiwan Strait.
Another telltale sign that Taiwan has been hypnotized by dreams of the goal is its warped perception of reality. The clearest indication that this is happening came from the mouth of Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌), who on Sunday said that the rights of the two giant pandas China has offered as a gift to Taiwan should be respected. Hau was referring to the pandas’ names, which he said could not be changed without violating the animals’ rights.
By no means does this newspaper advocate undermining the rights of animals. But the poor Tuan Tuan (團團) and Yuan Yuan (圓圓), political tools if ever there was one, certainly shouldn’t rank higher than human beings when it comes to respecting rights — unless, of course, they are part of The Process.
Under this regime, the rights of Taiwanese to not be detained without charge, to display symbols of nationhood or to demonstrate against a controversial visit by a Chinese envoy — and to do so without suffering police brutality — can apparently be broken, all in the name of The Process. A request by a venerable spiritual leader like the Dalai Lama to visit Taiwan, or for his supporters to welcome him, can be denied if it endangers The Process.
Worse, the right of Wo Weihan (伍維漢) — accused of spying for Taiwan and executed by Beijing last month — to a fair trial, or of the dozens of activists jailed and drugged by Chinese authorities on Human Rights Day, to express their opinion, can be curtailed as long as doing so ensures a smooth process.
In this political burlesque, government officials harp on the rights of pandas and request a police motorcade to ensure a smooth drive from the airport to Taipei Zoo. Limbs of Taiwanese can be broken, blood of Taiwanese can be spilled, Tibetans can be spirited to the hills of Neihu (內湖) in the dead of night, but the pandas must be comfortable. Men can be jailed, beaten, drugged or executed without a word of condemnation, but we should respect the names the pandas have grown accustomed to in order not to confuse them.
As it focuses on the goal, the Ma government has made a pair of pandas and The Process they symbolize a top priority, while relegating the millions of Taiwanese it supposedly represents to a lower rung.
For a country so flexible about its own name, it is most instructive to see just how resolute people in the pan-blue camp can be over the names of other species.
An outrageous dismissal of the exemplary Taiwanese fight against COVID-19 has been perpetrated by the EU. There is no excuse. I presume that everyone who reads the Taipei Times knows that the EU has excluded Taiwan from its so-called “safe list,” which permits citizens unhindered travel to and from the countries of the EU. As the EU does not feel that it needs to explain the character of this exclusive list, perhaps we should examine it ourselves in some detail. There are 14 nations on the list that have been chosen as safe countries of origin and safe countries of destination for
Filmmakers in Taiwan used to struggle when it came to telling a story that could resonate internationally. Things started to change when the 2017 drama series The Teenage Psychic (通靈少女), a collaboration between HBO Asia and Taiwanese Public Television Service (PTS), became a huge hit not just locally, but also internationally. The coming-of-age story was adapted from the 2013 PTS-produced short film The Busy Young Psychic (神算). Entirely filmed in Taiwan, the Mandarin-language series even made it on HBO’s streaming platforms in the US. It is proof that a well-told Taiwanese story can absolutely win the hearts and minds of hard-to-please
Drugged with sedatives, handcuffed and wearing a bright orange prison tunic, British fraud investigator and former journalist Peter Humphrey was escorted by warders into an interrogation room filled with reporters, locked inside a steel cage and fastened to a metal “tiger chair.” Humphrey recalls: “I was completely surrounded by officers, dazed, manacled and with cameras pointing at me through the bars. I was fighting for my life like a caged animal. It was horrifying.” Footage from the interrogation was later artfully edited to give the appearance of a confession and broadcast on Chinese state media. While this might sound like an
The US House of Representatives on July 1 passed by unanimous consent a bipartisan bill that would penalize Chinese officials who implement Beijing’s new national security legislation in Hong Kong, as well as banks that do business with them. The following day, the US Senate unanimously passed the bill, which was later sent to the White House, where it awaits US President Donald Trump’s signature. The bill does not spell out what the sanctions would look like and Trump has yet to sign it into law, but Reuters on Thursday last week reported that five major Chinese state lenders are considering
RSS