A few days ago, US-based Freedom House released a global survey entitled Freedom of the Press 2009 in which Taiwan’s press freedom ranking fell by 11 places from last year’s list.
It was no surprise that Taiwan’s ranking dropped, but the size of the fall is much greater than expected and very worrying. More worrying still is the fact that Hong Kong has been relegated from the “free” category to “partly free.”
The lesson is that if Taiwan’s media cannot resist penetration by China, Taiwan will before long go the same way as Hong Kong.
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and his government should bear full responsibility for this black mark on the record of their first year in office.
Unfortunately, all of them — from Ma to the Government Information Office — have brushed it off, saying rather unconvincingly that they would look into the matter.
Their reaction is evidence of a guilty conscience. Regrettably, however, there is no sign that they intend to take meaningful steps to uphold freedom of the press.
The main rationale given for why Taiwan’s global rating fell to No. 43 in the report is that the media have been subjected to government pressure, while journalists have been victims of violence or threats, mostly political in nature.
For example, FTV reporter Tsai Meng-yu (蔡孟育) needed hospital treatment after being beaten by riot police while covering protests against visiting Chinese envoy Chen Yunlin (陳雲林) last November.
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government has wantonly and crudely interfered in public broadcasting. The KMT-dominated legislature froze the budget of the Public Television Service (PTS) for a full year as the party’s lawmakers drafted legislation subjecting the station’s budget to item-by-item examination and approval.
These moves were clearly aimed at controlling the content of PTS news. In a healthy democracy, such interference would be unthinkable. But what commitment has Ma’s government made to upholding press freedom?
During his presidential election campaign, Ma signed his name to a declaration launched by the Association of Taiwan Journalists targeting product placement in news programs. The reality today, however, is that the government itself employs many resources to place its own propaganda in news reports. What happened to Ma’s pledges?
From Taiwan’s point of view, however, the most worrying aspect of this year’s Freedom House report is the fact that for the first time since it was returned to China in 1997, Hong Kong has been demoted from the “free” category to “partly free.”
The quantitative and qualitative changes that this formerly free territory have undergone are living proof of the threat a dictatorial regime poses to freedom of the press.
Press freedom in Taiwan today is threatened not only by political pressure arising from the KMT’s monopoly on power, but also by the infiltration of Chinese influence through commercial activities.
Although this latest report still places Taiwan in the “free” category, we have no reason to be complacent. If the Ma administration continues to open the door to Chinese-owned media, China’s dictators will be able to dig their claws deep into the weakened body of the Taiwanese media industry.
When news media in Taiwan no longer dare to report critically on China, the retreat in freedom of expression that we are witnessing will become a calamity.
Leon Chuang is chairman of the Association of Taiwan Journalists.
TRANSLATED BY JULIAN CLEGG
A Chinese diplomat’s violent threat against Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi following her remarks on defending Taiwan marks a dangerous escalation in East Asian tensions, revealing Beijing’s growing intolerance for dissent and the fragility of regional diplomacy. Chinese Consul General in Osaka Xue Jian (薛劍) on Saturday posted a chilling message on X: “the dirty neck that sticks itself in must be cut off,” in reference to Takaichi’s remark to Japanese lawmakers that an attack on Taiwan could threaten Japan’s survival. The post, which was later deleted, was not an isolated outburst. Xue has also amplified other incendiary messages, including one suggesting
Chinese Consul General in Osaka Xue Jian (薛劍) on Saturday last week shared a news article on social media about Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s remarks on Taiwan, adding that “the dirty neck that sticks itself in must be cut off.” The previous day in the Japanese House of Representatives, Takaichi said that a Chinese attack on Taiwan could constitute “a situation threatening Japan’s survival,” a reference to a legal legal term introduced in 2015 that allows the prime minister to deploy the Japan Self-Defense Forces. The violent nature of Xue’s comments is notable in that it came from a diplomat,
Before 1945, the most widely spoken language in Taiwan was Tai-gi (also known as Taiwanese, Taiwanese Hokkien or Hoklo). However, due to almost a century of language repression policies, many Taiwanese believe that Tai-gi is at risk of disappearing. To understand this crisis, I interviewed academics and activists about Taiwan’s history of language repression, the major challenges of revitalizing Tai-gi and their policy recommendations. Although Taiwanese were pressured to speak Japanese when Taiwan became a Japanese colony in 1895, most managed to keep their heritage languages alive in their homes. However, starting in 1949, when the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) enacted martial law
“Si ambulat loquitur tetrissitatque sicut anas, anas est” is, in customary international law, the three-part test of anatine ambulation, articulation and tetrissitation. And it is essential to Taiwan’s existence. Apocryphally, it can be traced as far back as Suetonius (蘇埃托尼烏斯) in late first-century Rome. Alas, Suetonius was only talking about ducks (anas). But this self-evident principle was codified as a four-part test at the Montevideo Convention in 1934, to which the United States is a party. Article One: “The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: a) a permanent population; b) a defined territory; c) government;
RSS