Lin Jia-min (林家民) should have been in class, but the ninth-grader and two of his friends skipped their English bushiban last Saturday morning to attend a rally for peace in the Middle East. Clad in yellow and blue polyester uniforms, they joined a modest crowd gathered outside the American Institute in Taipei (AIT) to express their opposition to a war in Iraq.
"America and Great Britain must understand that fighting will not bring peace to people in Iraq," Lin said in A-plus English. "It's up to us to tell them." Lin and his friends weren't alone. That same day, millions of people in more than 600 cities across the globe took to the streets in what news reports called the biggest peace rallies since the Vietnam War. What was different about the demonstration in front of AIT, however, is that it was among the first of its kind for Taiwanese.
"This was the first anti-war protest of a large scale in Taiwan," said Hsia Chu-joe (
Democracy protests
Of course the island has seen its share of protests. Taiwanese lived under martial law for 38 years -- the longest period in history -- until it was lifted in 1987. During those years, calls for democratization grew louder, with the Kaohsiung Incident of Dec. 10, 1979 the loudest of the calls. But democracy was really the only thing that brought Taiwanese voices together in protest. It was only after political liberalization that other movements began blossoming in Taiwan.
"We were called the pian di kai hua (遍地開花, flowers blossoming everywhere)," Hsia recalls. "After the lifting of martial law, besides the movement for democracy, there were others, such as the labor movement, the farmers' movement, student movement, womens' movement, gay and lesbian movements and the environmental movement, including people opposed to nuclear power."
But each of these movements sought to affect domestic change only. Local protests directed at the international community were generally related to the country's isolation after losing its UN seat to China in 1971. Even then, the nation's misgivings were voiced almost exclusively through diplomatic channels, with few public protests attended by still fewer people. Rarely have matters of international concern brought Taiwanese to the streets, and even more rarely have they gathered to call for peace.
An exception came during the 1970s, when tensions arose over ownership of a small group of uninhabited islands northeast of Taiwan. The Tiaoyutai (釣魚台), or Senkaku Islands, have long been a source of conflict between Taiwan, China and Japan, each of whom claim them as part of their territory. The feud has nearly come to fisticuffs on a number of occasions since 1969, when the UN Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East reported possible hydrocarbon deposits underlying the islands.
For Taiwanese, the dispute stoked both nationalistic sentiment and cries for peace sounded by several professors within NTU's department of philosophy. As students became increasingly boisterous, authorities ultimately forced the university to close its philosophy department and fire those professors who had been stirring the students to action, effectively squelching the nascent peace movement.
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