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
When Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) sits down with US President Donald Trump in Beijing on Thursday next week, Xi is unlikely to demand a dramatic public betrayal of Taiwan. He does not need to. Beijing’s preferred victory is smaller, quieter and in some ways far more dangerous: a subtle shift in American wording that appears technical, but carries major strategic meaning. The ask is simple: replace the longstanding US formulation that Washington “does not support Taiwan independence” with a harder one — that Washington “opposes” Taiwan independence. One word changes; a deterrence structure built over decades begins to shift.
The cancelation this week of President William Lai’s (賴清德) state visit to Eswatini, after the Seychelles, Madagascar and Mauritius revoked overflight permits under Chinese pressure, is one more measure of Taiwan’s shrinking executive diplomatic space. Another channel that deserves attention keeps growing while the first contracts. For several years now, Taipei has been one of Europe’s busiest legislative destinations. Where presidents and foreign ministers cannot land, parliamentarians do — and they do it in rising numbers. The Italian parliament opened the year with its largest bipartisan delegation to Taiwan to date: six Italian deputies and one senator, drawn from six
Recently, Taipei’s streets have been plagued by the bizarre sight of rats running rampant and the city government’s countermeasures have devolved into an anti-intellectual farce. The Taipei Parks and Street Lights Office has attempted to eradicate rats by filling their burrows with polyurethane foam, seeming to believe that rats could not simply dig another path out. Meanwhile, as the nation’s capital slowly deteriorates into a rat hive, the Taipei Department of Environmental Protection has proudly pointed to the increase in the number of poisoned rats reported in February and March as a sign of success. When confronted with public concerns over young
Taipei is facing a severe rat infestation, and the city government is reportedly considering large-scale use of rodenticides as its primary control measure. However, this move could trigger an ecological disaster, including mass deaths of birds of prey. In the past, black kites, relatives of eagles, took more than three decades to return to the skies above the Taipei Basin. Taiwan’s black kite population was nearly wiped out by the combined effects of habitat destruction, pesticides and rodenticides. By 1992, fewer than 200 black kites remained on the island. Fortunately, thanks to more than 30 years of collective effort to preserve their remaining
RSS