Practicing the philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi, former DPP chairman Lin I-hsiung (
A week ago, Lin led members of the Association for Promoting Public Voting on the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant (核四公投促進會) for a sit-down demonstration in front of the Executive Yuan to demand that the government determine the future of the controversial plant through a plebiscite.
PHOTO: SEAN CHAO, TAIPEI TIMES
Lin remained silent throughout the half-day activities as he joined the group on an hourly walk around the building, and he meditated when he was sitting down. He took no heed of any politicians that came to show their concern or sought to communicate with them.
The more Lin remains quiet, the more pressure the DPP feels because it was him who led the party to power, but now the former party chairman appears to be a major critical force as the party prepares for the presidential election next year.
Lin has been advocating non-violent resistance since the early 1990s. In 1994, he put the idea into practice by leading the first wave of nationwide anti-nuclear protests in September that year, which was preceded with a hunger strike.
The drive is on its third round. Since Sept. 21 last year, Lin has led activists on a 1,000km march across the country to rally support for a national referendum on the future of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant. He and his followers plan to march 20km every weekend for at least 50 weeks.
By launching the hunger strike and marching drive, Lin said he meant to "highlight the resolve of anti-nuclear activists and at the same time train the bodies and souls of the movement's campaigners."
An anti-nuclear stance is part of the DPP's party charter. Among the numerous anti-nuclear politicians, Lin wins the most respect because he is not trying to solicit votes. He regards opposing nuclear power as a political conviction and it is his life-long goal to abolish nuclear power in Taiwan, a goal which he tries to attain through physical suffering, like what is endured by an ascetic monk.
The DPP has paid a huge price on the anti-nuclear issue. In October 2000, the party made the announcement to scrap the project, in part due to Lin's insistence. But the decision quickly turned into a debacle for the DPP, which had only been in power for a few months and had a minority in the legislature. It was compelled to reverse its decision and give in to the opposition parties the following January. The same dilemma is coming back to vex the party two years later.
Lin is persistent, uncompromising and full of a sense of justice. But these qualities intensified after Lin's 6-year-old twin daughters were brutally murdered along with their grandmother on Feb. 28, 1980.
Lin's eldest daughter, Huan-chun (
The murder took place at midday in their home when Lin, then a provincial assemblyman, was arrested for participating in a human-rights rally in Kaohsiung on Dec. 10 the previous year, whereas his wife Fang Su-min (
The murderer has never been apprehended. However, Lin and many Taiwanese believe that the killings were politically motivated.
The girls and their grandmother were not buried until Lin was released from jail in 1984. Fang and the surviving daughter moved to the US to start a new life soon after the mishap. In 1985, Lin joined his family in California, setting out on a four-year voyage of learning in the US, Europe and Japan.
The time abroad was an opportunity for him to heal his sorrow and to hone his talents to serve Taiwan in the future.
But he also developed different interests, for the family tragedy had provoked him to pursue eternal values as he grew disenchanted with the transience of politics.
Since he returned to Taiwan in 1989, Lin has devoted himself to social and political reforms.
In March 1991, he founded the Chilin Foundation (慈林文教基金會), seeking to end political corruption through spiritual reform. The foundation focuses on cultivating young talents and disseminating Lin's beliefs in mercy and love.
At the time when the DPP's resolution on reform has sometimes given way to political considerations, Lin represents a moral force in the party that can not be challenged.
Lin treats issues such as the anti-nuclear movement or the need for a public referendum like a social-awakening movement. They are tools for him to carry out his conception of true democracy, which is, "the people are the master in a civil society; the strength of the people outweighs that of the government."
It will be a long way to go before he reaches his goals under Taiwan's fledgling democracy.
As he cited Robert Frost's poem The Road Not Taken the day he resigned his DPP chairmanship in May 2000, Lin said that he would always choose "the road less traveled by, and that has made all the difference."
The difference Lin insists, however, will put the DPP in a quandary.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater