Lawmakers on Wednesday last week passed amendments to the National Security Act (NSA, 國家安全法) that impose higher sentences and fines for espionage and for recruiting people in Taiwan on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), as well as extend the act’s purview to cyberspace.
The latter has proven particularly controversial, and has led once more to the government being accused of overseeing an era of so-called “green terror” — the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is the cornerstone of the pan-green camp — comparing it with the horrors and lack of freedoms during the White Terror era under the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) authoritarian regime. That period only ended with the lifting of martial law in 1987.
The comparison is not only preposterous, it is also insulting to all Taiwanese who lived through the White Terror.
The NSA was implemented in 1987, just prior to the end of martial law. It was regarded as necessary to fill the role previously covered by martial law regulations that protected the state.
The DPP was critical of the bill at the time and its stance then is being used by the pan-blue camp now to question why the DPP is so keen to reinforce the NSA’s powers.
This needs to be seen in the context of the time, when a distrusting DPP, formed only a year previously and still technically illegal under martial law, had concerns about how the authoritarian government was going to use the powers vested in it by the NSA.
The current political situation is entirely different. Taiwan is now a democracy where the electorate has come to expect adherence to the rule of law, due process, basic rights guarantees and freedom of speech.
While none of these can or should be taken for granted, whichever party is in government, and while there are legitimate concerns over last week’s amendments, let us be realistic: There is no “green terror.”
When the NSA was first implemented, the KMT was protecting its party-state regime against the threat of the CCP. That threat is no less now, given the increasing military might of a hegemonic China, and it is the nation’s sovereignty and democratic freedoms that are at risk.
Taiwan is endangered by Chinese espionage and by pro-China Taiwanese outlets openly colluding with the CCP to manipulate public discourse to be more conducive to unification, as well as individuals recruiting people in Taiwan to work toward this cause.
An example of the latter was when New Party spokesman Wang Ping-chung (王炳忠) was last year indicted, among others in the party, under the NSA of receiving Chinese funding and being involved in espionage on China’s behalf.
When his apartment was raided by investigators in 2017, Wang cried “green terror.” His protestations were neatly ridiculed at the time by lawyer Lu Chiou-yuan (呂秋遠), who pointed out the differences between how Wang was being treated and what he would have faced during the White Terror era.
The original text of the NSA is very brief, and therefore necessarily non-specific and open to interpretation. This is also the main concern being leveled at the government’s decision now to extend the NSA’s scope to include cyberspace.
Legal academics and KMT lawmakers have said that there is little in the way of specifics or definitions of what cyberspace is, what constitutes a crime, how the crime is to be dealt with and which body is to make these determinations. The greater the room for interpretation, the more problematic enforcing the law will be. Their argument is valid.
If the government wants to implement actionable legislation to stem the dissemination of fake news and espionage in cyberspace, it should implement separate legislation with clear and specific definitions, sanctions and room for accountability.
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