Wed, Mar 07, 2001 page2

• Kobayashi ban being reviewed

  PERSONA NON GRATA Premier Chang has ordered the government to rethink its policy, saying Taiwan's international image could be sullied

  • CNA
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  Premier Chang Chun-hsiung (張俊雄) said yesterday that he has already instructed the Ministry of the Interior to re-evaluate within a week the government's policies and regulations related to denying entry to blacklisted persons.

  Responding to legislator questioning at a routine interpellation session, Chang said that although Japanese cartoonist Yoshinori Kobayashi's (小林善) controversial comic book On Taiwan (台灣論) "twisted the truth" in sections about "comfort women" and indigenous people, Taiwan's international image and human rights track record would suffer if the government were to name the right-wing writer a persona non grata simply because it does not agree with his opinions.

  In the comic book, Kobayashi quoted senior presidential policy adviser Shi Wen-lung (許文龍) as saying Taiwan's "comfort women" were not forced into becoming prostitutes for the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II.

  

  Supporters of the Taiwan Independence Party protest yesterday in front of the Ministry of the Interior against the ban on Japanese cartoonist Kobayashi Yoshinori's entry into Taiwan. The placard asks, "Did the comfort women at 831 [work] voluntarily?" 831 is the code name for military brothels set up under the KMT government.

  PHOTO: CHEN CHENG-CHANG, TAIPEI TIMES

  Kobayashi also claimed that some of Taiwan's indigenous people willingly joined the Japanese army.

  The ban, which the ministry earlier said it would re-evaluate, drew strong criticisms from one of President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) policy advisers, Alice King (金美齡), who returned from her year-round residence in Japan on Saturday.

  King was banned from entering Taiwan for three decades during the era of martial law, which did not come to an end until 1987.

  Meanwhile, at another legislative session earlier in the day, opposition legislators demanded the dismissal of the two presidential advisers.

  KMT lawmaker, Chen Ching-pao (陳清寶), said at a routine national affairs forum that the two cannot continue to claim that they only represent their own opinions while they remain presidential advisers.

  Lawmaker's were particularly incensed after King -- a longstanding supporter of Taiwan's independence -- said on a television talk show that she does not recognize the Republic of China.

  Daring President Chen to step into the fray, Chen said the president should step forward to "say something" instead of "hiding in the Presidential Office" while his advisers "shame the whole nation."

  Pro-China People First Party lawmaker Chin Huei-chu (秦慧珠) said that if King continues to say she is not an ROC citizen and does not recognize the Republic of China, then the president and the premier should not simply sit by while she "tramples all over the Republic of China," but should instead dismiss her from her post.

  Meanwhile, a 30-member delegation of the radical Taiwan Independence Party staged a peaceful protest in front of the Ministry of the Interior to denounce its decision to ban Kobayashi from entry into Taiwan.

  They said that Chinese President Jiang Zemin (蔣澤民) and Premier Zhu Rongji (朱鎔基) are the ones who are actually endangering Taiwan's national security and demanded that they should be blacklisted.
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