The campaign to see former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) released from jail on medical parole received a shot in the arm earlier this week with the arrival in Taiwan of former US attorney-general Ramsey Clark, who warned President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration that it risked being regarded as a “murderer” if it allowed Chen’s health to continue to deteriorate while in prison.
For months now, a small number of people within the pan-green camp have argued that Chen’s jail conditions are detrimental to his health, while others maintain that his incarceration for corruption is purely the result of political repression by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). Here is not the place to debate the merits of those arguments. Suffice it to say that the complexity of the case, not to mention its future implications, requires minds both sober and fair.
Having failed to rally a sufficiently large segment of Taiwanese society to the cause, which until recently had allowed the administration to downplay the matter, some Chen supporters have turned to the US for help, a gambit that resulted in a visit by medical experts (who unsurprisingly determined that Chen’s condition was deteriorating) and a handful of impassioned — and sometimes hyperbolic — op-eds that went largely ignored.
Granted, major human rights organizations like Human Rights Watch seem to have forgotten about Taiwan, attributing this to a lack of resources and, they argue, the much worse human rights violations that occur elsewhere. This disinterest has forced Taiwanese activists, who use US pressure on the Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) regime in the 1980s as a precedent for positive interventionism, to look elsewhere for support.
The problem, both for the activists and ultimately for Chen, is that the support they have managed to garner comes from rather dubious sources, so much so that rather than help the cause, it risks undermining the very legitimacy of their purpose. Clark, unfortunately, is a perfect example of this. It is one thing to seek outside help; it’s another to do so regardless of the cost to one’s integrity.
The issue with Clark is that he brings along baggage that harms his credibility as a human rights defender. There is no denying that he got off to a good start in 1980 when he flew here to bring international attention to the situation in Taiwan following the Kaohsiung Incident, a move that, years later, some Taiwanese dissidents of the time say probably saved their lives. Clark’s odd turn, and what ultimately harms his image, occurred decades later in his career, when he decided to side with the likes of Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic, two tyrants who were responsible for the deaths of countless thousands of their own people.
It is hard to take Clark seriously when, attending the butcher of the Balkans’ funeral in 2006 (Milosevic died in a UN war crimes tribunal detention center in The Hague), he said that history would prove Milosevic right and that he and Saddam, were “both commanders who were courageous enough to fight more powerful countries.”
Rights organizations rightly pointed out flaws in the process surrounding the two former leaders’ trials, but to argue that history would prove them right, or to draw a moral equivalence between despots and the world leaders who, along with NATO, tried to end their genocidal acts, is irresponsible in the extreme.
Chen’s fate, as are the problems of corruption by government officials and the independence of the judiciary, are matters of great importance for the future of this country.
Consequently, those who are called upon to intervene in such matters must be chosen carefully lest their involvement turn into a circus performance, which in the end can only harm the very fabric of our society as well as those who deserve justice.
Unless Hollywood movies like Greenland, Deep Impact, and Armageddon have predictive powers and a rogue space rock is heading our way, stopping Chinese Communist Party expansionism is likely to prove the single most challenging and dangerous problem of our lifetimes. How can the United States, Taiwan, and other liberal democracies prepare for and prevent attacks from China? How can Washington bolster Taipei’s confidence when it doesn’t recognize Taiwan as a real country and, so far, lacks the political will to make major adjustments to its ossified China policy and Taiwan policy? How can Taiwan make itself heard on the world stage when
Hypersonic weapons are defined as armaments capable of traveling at speeds faster than Mach 5 and can be broadly classified into two types: hypersonic glide vehicles (HGV) and hypersonic cruise missiles. The former are launched into the upper atmosphere by ballistic missiles. The vehicle is then separated from the booster to maneuver, or glide, toward its target. The latter can be launched from a jet plane or rocket to reach supersonic speed before igniting a scramjet engine to achieve hypersonic speeds. As the US engages in a great-power competition with China and Russia, all three countries are racing to field hypersonic
The number of people emigrating from Hong Kong has been rapidly increasing, Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department data show, with the territory’s population dropping by 110,000 people from 2019 to this year. China’s imposition of a National Security Law has clearly triggered a massive population outflow. However, not only people but also foreign businesses are leaving Hong Kong. For example, Vanguard Group, the world’s second-largest asset management company, VF Corp and Sony Interactive Entertainment have moved their top regional management from Hong Kong to Singapore. LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton, the world’s largest luxury goods company, has also relocated staff
Oppression is painful, and not being able to express it increases the pain 10-fold. This level of pain is something that Uighurs, Tibetans and Mongolians understand all too well. A question often posed to Uighurs in the international arena is: “You say you are facing genocide, but why don’t we see corpses, like in Rwanda and in Bosnia?” If you were a Uighur, what would you say? What if you replied: “The source of the problem is your lack of vision. It’s an indication of your weakness and China’s strength, and it is not a matter of our sincerity.” Such a harsh response would
RSS