Speaking at a committee meeting in the legislature on April 18, Vice Minister of National Defense Lin Yu-pao (林於豹) said that the criminal act committed by Justin Lin (林毅夫) when he defected to China in 1979 continues to this day, so there can be no question of a time limit for prosecution having passed.
Lin Yu-pao said that defection has to do with the core ideology of military personnel, is not permissible and may be punishable by death, according to the law. He said that although relations across the Taiwan Strait have relaxed, China is still a big threat, and the core ideology of the nation’s military has not changed.
The logic of what Lin Yu-pao said is that if Justin Lin were exempt from prosecution and came back to Taiwan to flaunt China’s power, the morale of Taiwan’s armed forces would fall apart and Taiwanese people would get confused about which country they are supposed to belong to.
The mission of Taiwan’s armed forces is to fight for the existence of the Republic of China (ROC) and for the security and well-being of people living in Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu, but this mission becomes a mockery when seen against the background of the political actions of the government of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九). For the same reason, Lin Yu-pao’s words seem equally out of place these days.
If the army considers Justin Lin to be a deserter and a defector, then Ma’s party, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), and his government should be even firmer in its awareness of who our enemies are. When officials from Taiwan visit China, the last thing they should be doing is shaking hands and exchanging pleasantries with the likes of Justin Lin.
In reality, however, plenty of people from the KMT and the Ma administration have met Justin Lin on their visits to China and are very proud to have done so. Take Vice President Vincent Siew (蕭萬長) for example. Following the Democratic Progressive Party’s victory in the 2000 presidential election, Siew visited China in his capacity as chairman of the Cross-Straits Common Market Foundation. The person Beijing sent to meet Siew was Justin Lin, in his role as executive director of the China Center for Economic Research at Peking University. One would have thought that Siew would feel angry and ashamed when China insulted Taiwan by sending a traitor to greet him, but apparently not.
The logic of the KMT and the government is very hard to fathom. In Taiwan, Justin Lin remains on the wanted list, but when the KMT and government officials go to China they are full of praise for him, just as they would be for any Taiwanese who went abroad and made good through hard work. China’s dictatorial rulers must find it very amusing to see such a farce played out on their own territory, while all the while they keep threatening to annex Taiwan.
The Justin Lin case is just one example of China’s carrot-and-stick approach. China doesn’t balk at using united-front tactics and threats of military force at the same time — anything to achieve its purpose of swallowing Taiwan.
Ma himself has warned that although the light of peace is shining over the Taiwan Strait, Taiwanese should not forget that China is still the biggest threat to Taiwan’s security. On the other hand, Ma, under the shadow of China’s missile threat, touts the fictional so-called “1992 consensus,” and has signed 15 agreements with China. We would like to ask Ma whether, in his heart, China is an enemy or a friend.
The hardest thing for people in Taiwan to accept is that when China sent over a hostile minor official who went around pronouncing his views about Taiwan’s sovereignty, namely that Taiwan is a part of China, the Ma administration mobilized large numbers of police to suppress protests by indignant Taiwanese. The police even went so far as to ban people from carrying the ROC flag or playing patriotic music like the Song of Taiwan.
In such an upside-down situation, it was no great wonder when one woman police officer yelled to the crowd: “My commanding officer is the People’s Republic of China!”
Now visits to Taiwan by Chinese officials have become an almost everyday occurrence. These haughty officials act like imperial envoys sent out to the provinces on a tour of inspection, but people from the KMT can’t wait to go banqueting with them, and when Ma receives them he does so with the utmost courtesy. Strange, isn’t it? You’d think that officials from an enemy country would be rounded up and put behind bars. Ma says that the ROC’s sovereignty extends to the whole of China. In that case, shouldn’t prosecutors in Taiwan press charges against these Chinese officials for suppressing the Falun Gong?
Of course what Lin Yu-pao said about the core ideology of the armed forces is quite right, and so is what he said about Justin Lin being indefinitely liable to be prosecuted. The vice minister should stick to his guns, otherwise there would hardly be any point in having an army.
However, having a few people in the military who see the light is not enough. China’s spy network has penetrated into Taiwan’s armed forces, and plenty of retired senior officers from the Taiwan side have gone to China to show how dedicated they are to a “common cause.” Their pensions are paid out of Taiwanese taxes, but they are now in the service of eventual unification with China.
Besides, the inability or unwillingness of the KMT and the government to distinguish between friend and foe, and their friendly attitude to the other side, are at least as damaging to the armed forces’ determination to defend the country as any defector or deserter, if not more so.
The Ma administration has been in office for less than three years, but it is making Taiwan look less and less like an independent country. The root cause is that, while Ma is the president of Taiwan, in his heart he is devoted to eventual unification with China. Ma’s variety of Greater China ideology may not be quite the same as Justin Lin’s, but their ultimate goal is one and the same.
Justin Lin defected a long time ago and there’s not much that can be done about it. The scariest thing now is that there are plenty more Justin Lins in Taiwan whose actions are tantamount to desertion and defection, but who get away with it. They live off taxes paid by Taiwanese while doing all they can to oppose Taiwan’s independence and to promote unification with China. Ironically, it is Taiwan’s democracy and freedom that allows them to do so.
The pro-democracy campaigners these same people suppressed in the past must be spinning in their graves.
It’s high time for Taiwanese to wake up and defend our democracy and freedom. We can’t let these people use democracy and freedom to bury democratic Taiwan in the grave of “one China.”
TRANSLATED BY JULIAN CLEGG
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