It came as a shock to hear that former legislator Hsieh Tsung-min (謝聰敏), who in 1964 co-drafted the “Declaration of Formosan Self-Salvation” with his professor Peng Ming-min (彭明敏) and classmate Wei Ting-chao (魏廷朝), has passed away.
I interviewed him in early 2017 when compiling material for Wei’s memoir. Severely tortured in prison at a young age, Hsieh in later years suffered from kidney disease. Despite his suffering, he remained optimistic and went swimming every morning.
A classmate of former Judicial Yuan president Shih Chi-yang (施啟揚) and writer Li Ao (李敖) at Taichung First Senior High School, Hsieh was admitted to National Taiwan University’s College of Law with the school’s highest score.
The declaration was drafted by Hsieh and further revised by Wei due to its length. The draft was then finalized by Peng, but all of them were arrested and jailed before the declaration was distributed. Peng received a special pardon from then-president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), while Hsieh and Wei were granted sentence commutation.
In early 1970, Peng escaped and went into exile in Sweden, much to the chagrin of intelligence agents. Hsieh, Wei and Li were then placed under surveillance around the clock before being arrested and once again imprisoned for two explosions in which they were not actually involved.
In a bid to let the truth be known to the public in Taiwan and overseas, Hsieh secretly wrote a letter in English on prison toilet paper calling for help and asked inmate Masashige Kobayashi to bring the letter out of Taiwan when he was released.
Peng, who had moved to the US at that time, was worried that the letter’s publication would lead to severe torture of Hsieh and conveyed his concerns through contacts, but Hsieh remained undeterred.
Finally, the letter, titled “From a Taiwan Prison,” was published by the New York Times on April 24, 1972, and the US House of Representatives sent a team to investigate human rights in Taiwan.
Hsieh later said that “fortunately the New York Times’ publication of the letter shocked the nation and the world, otherwise they wouldn’t even know how we died.” After the letter’s publication, Hsieh’s situation drew the attention of the US Congress and international human rights groups, but he was nonetheless severely tortured.
After a failed escape attempt, Hsieh had to wear ankle shackles and nearly died of gallstones. Luckily, his condition was diagnosed by late Academia Sinica academician Sung Juei-low (宋瑞樓), and Hsieh was released on medical parole.
Prior to the Formosa Incident, Hsieh arrived in the US, where he was informed by US intelligence that the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) was about to arrest dangwai (黨外, “outside the party”) dissidents. Hsieh advised Wei to resign from Formosa Magazine, but Wei, lacking a sense of danger, was arrested and sent to jail for the third time.
When Hsieh returned to Taiwan in 1988 hoping to run for a legislative seat, he said that “when I was drafting the declaration, the new political elite of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) did not even exist.” Ostracized by certain DPP members, Hsieh acquired qualification as a candidate thanks to the help of Shih, a KMT member.
Wei, Shih, Hsieh, late DPP politician Chai Trong-rong (蔡同榮), late legal scholar Chiu Hung-dah (丘宏達) and late minister of justice Hsiao Tien-tzang (蕭天讚) all graduated from NTU in 1958. These elites crossed party lines and all had a profound influence on the modern history of Taiwan and cross-strait relations. With their passing, an era ends.
Ho Lai-mei is a writer of culture and history.
Translated by Chang Ho-ming
On May 7, 1971, Henry Kissinger planned his first, ultra-secret mission to China and pondered whether it would be better to meet his Chinese interlocutors “in Pakistan where the Pakistanis would tape the meeting — or in China where the Chinese would do the taping.” After a flicker of thought, he decided to have the Chinese do all the tape recording, translating and transcribing. Fortuitously, historians have several thousand pages of verbatim texts of Dr. Kissinger’s negotiations with his Chinese counterparts. Paradoxically, behind the scenes, Chinese stenographers prepared verbatim English language typescripts faster than they could translate and type them
More than 30 years ago when I immigrated to the US, applied for citizenship and took the 100-question civics test, the one part of the naturalization process that left the deepest impression on me was one question on the N-400 form, which asked: “Have you ever been a member of, involved in or in any way associated with any communist or totalitarian party anywhere in the world?” Answering “yes” could lead to the rejection of your application. Some people might try their luck and lie, but if exposed, the consequences could be much worse — a person could be fined,
Xiaomi Corp founder Lei Jun (雷軍) on May 22 made a high-profile announcement, giving online viewers a sneak peek at the company’s first 3-nanometer mobile processor — the Xring O1 chip — and saying it is a breakthrough in China’s chip design history. Although Xiaomi might be capable of designing chips, it lacks the ability to manufacture them. No matter how beautifully planned the blueprints are, if they cannot be mass-produced, they are nothing more than drawings on paper. The truth is that China’s chipmaking efforts are still heavily reliant on the free world — particularly on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing
Keelung Mayor George Hsieh (謝國樑) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) on Tuesday last week apologized over allegations that the former director of the city’s Civil Affairs Department had illegally accessed citizens’ data to assist the KMT in its campaign to recall Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) councilors. Given the public discontent with opposition lawmakers’ disruptive behavior in the legislature, passage of unconstitutional legislation and slashing of the central government’s budget, civic groups have launched a massive campaign to recall KMT lawmakers. The KMT has tried to fight back by initiating campaigns to recall DPP lawmakers, but the petition documents they
RSS