It is an intriguing sign of the changing political mood that some of the most vigorous protests over scandals involving ethnic vilification and government neglect have come from the pan-blue camp.
In this context, whether or not recalled Government Information Office envoy Kuo Kuan-ying (郭冠英) is the man behind the demented blog entries of “Fan Lan-chin” (范蘭欽) means little. The fact that racist musings on oppression and supposed Taiwanese inferiority seem to be acceptable within certain circles, together with the fact that it took so long for this issue to be dealt with, is of much greater concern.
Smarter heads in the pan-blue camp have therefore spoken out. There have been denunciations in the legislature and elsewhere by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) figures who know that detente with China requires that this kind of fuss be put to bed.
But then, in a classic example of bad timing, Wednesday’s Apple Daily reported on White Terror-era documents and preserved body parts being kept in a building once used for torturing suspects.
The body parts may be exhibits or other forms of evidence from more recent legal proceedings. However, given the manner in which they were dumped in such a grim location, the Ministry of Justice should ensure that each container of body parts is inventoried, cross-checked and — if legal processes have been completed — returned to families for disposal or independent forensic analysis if desired.
Even if the body parts have no sinister background, their discovery together with data from the White Terror era could not have produced a more nauseating symbol of neglect and state criminality.
The Fan Lan-chin controversy suggests that racist and culturalist attitudes demeaning ethnic Taiwanese may be more widespread and influential than government rhetoric would admit.
But together with the second incident, Taiwan’s greater tragedy is invoked: the unstarted — and probably unstartable — business of accountability for state criminal activity during the Martial Law era.
It is rather unlikely that an ugly building on a Taipei County hillside would store the last unaccounted-for evidence of persecution by the state. Hopefully the discovery will spur — if not shame — officials into ensuring that all remaining materials in the government’s possession are located and published.
The administration of former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) had eight long years to sweep the system to ensure that such materials were recovered, archived and released to the public. Over time it became clear that these efforts fell short. Even today, there remain documents relating to state oppression that the public cannot access except by application — a process that depends on the inscrutable discretion of archival authorities. Even then, in many cases, no recording of documents is permitted.
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has an opportunity to change all this and allow the public access to these historical materials, no matter how sensitive.
But there is reason to be skeptical. When Chen was in power, the pan-blue camp periodically accused the government of stirring up ethnic tensions. Most of the time, this was a tactic that deliberately conflated the promotion of a constructive Taiwanese consciousness with prejudice against Mainlanders, thus making it easier to stonewall sensible legislation.
How amusing it is, then, to see these same stonewallers leaping to the podium to denounce nastier expressions of their ideology so that its core principle of subservience to a wider national identity will seem less objectionable.
Less amusing is the reality that the core of the KMT’s leadership would sooner bury unaccounted-for files forever rather than exhume them.
Because much of what former US president Donald Trump says is unhinged and histrionic, it is tempting to dismiss all of it as bunk. Yet the potential future president has a populist knack for sounding alarums that resonate with the zeitgeist — for example, with growing anxiety about World War III and nuclear Armageddon. “We’re a failing nation,” Trump ranted during his US presidential debate against US Vice President Kamala Harris in one particularly meandering answer (the one that also recycled urban myths about immigrants eating cats). “And what, what’s going on here, you’re going to end up in World War
Earlier this month in Newsweek, President William Lai (賴清德) challenged the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to retake the territories lost to Russia in the 19th century rather than invade Taiwan. He stated: “If it is for the sake of territorial integrity, why doesn’t [the PRC] take back the lands occupied by Russia that were signed over in the treaty of Aigun?” This was a brilliant political move to finally state openly what many Chinese in both China and Taiwan have long been thinking about the lost territories in the Russian far east: The Russian far east should be “theirs.” Granted, Lai issued
On Tuesday, President William Lai (賴清德) met with a delegation from the Hoover Institution, a think tank based at Stanford University in California, to discuss strengthening US-Taiwan relations and enhancing peace and stability in the region. The delegation was led by James Ellis Jr, co-chair of the institution’s Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region project and former commander of the US Strategic Command. It also included former Australian minister for foreign affairs Marise Payne, influential US academics and other former policymakers. Think tank diplomacy is an important component of Taiwan’s efforts to maintain high-level dialogue with other nations with which it does
On Sept. 2, Elbridge Colby, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development, wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal called “The US and Taiwan Must Change Course” that defends his position that the US and Taiwan are not doing enough to deter the People’s Republic of China (PRC) from taking Taiwan. Colby is correct, of course: the US and Taiwan need to do a lot more or the PRC will invade Taiwan like Russia did against Ukraine. The US and Taiwan have failed to prepare properly to deter war. The blame must fall on politicians and policymakers