The 1970s was a time of intense social and political change around the world. Both a product of and contributor to the period's many changes was Amnesty International, whose exponential growth throughout that decade catapulted it from a small, but very activist, European network with minimal name-recognition at the beginning of the decade, to an internationally recognized organization with a US$1 million annual budget and activist members at the farthest reaches of the globe.
It all began with the publication of a letter by British lawyer Peter Benenson on May 28, 1961 in the London Observer titled "The Forgotten Prisoners." The letter was written to denounce the practice of imprisoning people solely on the basis of a person's writings or words.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF CHANG CHIH-HUI
Within months Amnesty was off and running. By the end of its first decade, Amnesty's secretary general, Martin Ennals, had made two visits to Taiwan, where the people in the Government Information Office
Amnesty was initially greeted as simply another bunch of pesky foreigners whose political agenda was but a step away from that of the Communists the government was combatting. But Ennals explained that Amnesty did not have a political agenda, and that Taiwan, far from being the only focus of Amnesty's concerns, could also be a partner in the international human rights crusade by providing information sought by the organization on political prisoners in China.
Starting with Ennals' first visits, Amnesty worked tirelessly to gather as much information in Taiwan as it could about what it called "prisoners of conscience." On his second visit to Taiwan, Ennals visited Roger Hsieh (
"I met [Ennals] through the introduction of Peng Ming-min (
The list given Ennals by Lee Ao was helpful, but Ennals asked that more details be fleshed out for each prisoner. In addition to names, home provinces and age, he also wanted the date of sentencing, length of sentence, stature under which the person had been sentenced, and something about the "actual crime," since the sedition-suppressing statutes were so vague and all-encompassing. Ennals also made clear that no crimes involving violence or the advocacy of violence would be taken up by Amnesty, so, in the case of a prisoner being charged with a capital offense like "plotting an armed uprising," for example, every effort had to be taken to determine whether the charges were bogus.
This criterion was to be put to the test within a year of Ennals' and Hsieh's first meeting. By late spring 1971, Hsieh, Lee, Wei Ting-chao (
As a letter campaign got underway, stony silence that the government had initially adopted became increasingly untenable as a means of responding to an organization that was growing so rapidly, not only in size but also in terms of prestige and influence. By 1977 Amnesty International had won two Nobel Peace Prizes -- one for its chairman, Sean MacBridge, and one for the organization as a whole.
The silence eventually gave way to condemnation.
"That was a give-away -- the `indicator.' If the government was going to the trouble to pillory Amnesty International in the press, then we knew that it deserved a closer look," said Chen Chu (陳菊) , now Chairwoman of the Council on Labor Affairs, recalling with gratitude the knowledge that "there were people outside who knew about us and cared enough to insist that our basic human rights be protected."
Amnesty sent Jack Hasegawa, head of the New York-based Friends World College program in Kyoto in 1974, and New York University professor James Seymour in 1975, to look into allegations that Hsieh had been tortured and was to be retried. Although Seymour was unable to get into the trial, Hsieh today believes that having an observer sitting outside the courtroom had a big impact on the outcome.
"I was in a cell where all was black, and not even God could be found. Knowing that Amnesty was out there working for me made all the difference in the world," Hsieh said. Keeping pace with Amnesty International's growing international credibility was its ability to tap into an ever-expanding roster of information sources. Foreigners of many nationalities played an important role in a world-girdling informational network which all came together in London.
Due to Amnesty International's efforts, backed up by its ability to tap into an ever-expanding roster of information sources, many prisoners in Taiwan had their sentences reduced or their conditions otherwise ameliorated.
One of the key points on Amnesty International's information network was Japan, where Amnesty's national section, and more especially Group Five -- the "Kansai Group" -- worked tirelessly throughout the decade. Osaka City University professor Kawakubo Kimio (川久保公夫), one of the founders of the group, made a great contribution, little known within Amnesty circles, even less without. Kawakubo and his associates labored strenuously to ensure that Taiwan would remain on the Amnesty agenda, while at the same time pushing materials on Taiwanese political prisoners into the hands of journalists, politicians, church leaders, students and thousands of concerned individuals in Japan.
During this defining period of Taiwan's human right's development, there were few other organizations drawing attention to the plight of individual political prisoners outside of the expatriate Taiwanese community, and none of them enjoyed the kind of international recognition that Amnesty International had. Had it not been for Amnesty, many of these prisoners would have remained utterly unknown to the outside world.
This attempt to hold a candle to what were called "the dark room burials" of political dissidents began to encourage people inside Taiwan to think in terms of an international human rights movement. By the end of the decade, more and more activists were moving to the fore in the paths of Roger Hsieh and Chen Chu, both of whom were greatly encouraged to increase their activity in the knowledge that they were not alone.
With the Kaohsiung Incident on Dec. 10, 1979, the lid was blown off the already-crumbling edifice of secrecy and dissembling built by the government. With the arrest of nearly the entire tangwai (non-KMT) leadership, the record of human rights failures in Taiwan was now a matter of public record.
But even with so many international organizations and individuals, including members of the US Congress, mobilized to defend the non-violent credentials of the Kaohsiung Eight, it was still of immense help to be able to say that Huang Hsin-chieh (黃信介), for example, was an Amnesty "prisoner of conscience." The Kaohsiung Incident marked the end of the decade as neatly as it did the closing of an important chapter in Taiwan's democratic development. Together, the democratic movement in Taiwan and the international human rights movement had made great strides in advancing their common cause.
Lynn Miles was co-founder of the International Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in Taiwan and a member of the Japan section of Amnesty International during the 1970s.
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