Hyping ‘green terror’
After four members of the New Party were released following questioning by prosecutors on suspicion of having violated the National Security Act (國家安全法), they held a news conference to condemn President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) administration for carrying out “green terror.”
Former television weatherman James Lee (李富城) said this “green terror” is a hundred times worse than the past White Terror era, while Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) repeatedly questioned the legitimacy of the detention.
Today, all facts about the White Terror era during the KMT authoritarian regime have not been revealed. Here are some personal opinions about the people who oppose the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and do so by sullying the nation’s hard-won democracy with talk about “green terror” being worse than the White Terror era.
First, whether justice is unfair and harmful to human rights is not decided by those who are opposed to these values, and lawyers and politicians should not interpret laws and regulations from an ideologically colored point of view.
If the prosecutors’ search and detention of the New Party officials was inappropriate, the officials in charge of the case should be held responsible for this. By linking the case to the passing of the Act on Promoting Transitional Justice (促進轉型正義條例) earlier this month, Wu showed not only a complete insensitivity to the KMT’s past repression of Taiwanese, but also a lack of empathy.
Besides, can the DPP government really tell prosecutors what to do or not do?
If such political intervention really does exist today, surely searching former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) home and detaining him would bring greater political dividends? Those New Party members who are looking toward the “Chinese motherland” have become the butt of jokes over a cup of tea here in Taiwan.
The New Party is highly critical of the Tsai administration, saying that the party would make every effort to save its members, while pro-blue media are launching a comprehensive propaganda campaign in an attempt to brainwash readers, which just goes to show how ignorant and ridiculous they really are.
Those New Party members praised China’s open trial of Taiwanese human rights advocate Lee Ming-che (李明哲), but they turned a blind eye to the fact that Lee had been detained for several months before being forced to plead guilty.
Although the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office had the necessary arrest warrant when requesting New Party spokesman Wang Ping-chung (王炳忠) to come in for questioning, Wang still refused to open his door. Another New Party member, Hou Han-ting (侯漢廷), looked as if he was about to die a martyr’s death when he was detained, and he thanked the Tsai administration for turning him into a “political prisoner.”
Still, these New Party members were quickly released after being questioned the next day.
These members could not stop crying at their news conference, which stood in stark contrast to Lee Ming-che’s composed look as he pleaded guilty in China. By comparison, the so-called “green terror” is nothing.
Chin Ching
Taipei
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