Fri, Dec 12, 2003 page3

• Isolation leaves nation at risk, rights group says

  Scott Horton, president of the New York-based International League for Human Right, visited Taiwan this week. Horton spoke with 'Taipei Times' staff reporter Debby Wu on Wednesday about President Chen Shui-bian's winning the league's International Human Rights Award this year, Taiwan's status and the Taiwan-US relationship

  • By Debby Wu / STAFF REPORTER
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  Taipei Times: Could you talk about President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) winning the International Human Rights Award?

  Scott Horton: He had been a candidate for several years, and he was first considered before he was elected president. We thought the whole situation in Taiwan, with its really remarkable movement toward democracy, hasn't gotten enough attention in the world.

  Second, there's an attack on the human rights movement coming from the so-called "Asian values," especially led by Beijing, but also Singapore and Kuala Lumpur taking this view.

  For us, it's particularly interesting to see that here in East Asia we have a country that has thrown off its authoritarian roots and become a vibrant democracy. It embraces human rights, and sees nothing culturally European or Western about it.

  We spent some time looking at his [Chen's] program and his personal records, and we thought they absolutely merited being honored and recognized, so we decided to do this.

  But what happened is SARS intervened. We were originally going to do this [give Chen the award] at the beginning of the year. In fact, we looked at the schedule for election, and thought we'd do it at the beginning of the year because we don't want people thinking this has anything to do with the president's election campaign.

  Then the SARS epidemic happened, and we had scheduled an award dinner earlier in the year and it had to be cancelled because travel was cancelled.

  It wound up being rescheduled to the end of October, and we, frankly, weren't so happy about the delay because it began to move into the election period. But we can't say that we were going to give you an award but now we are taking it back because you're going on a political campaign.

  Looking at the Kuomintang [Chinese Nationalist Party, KMT] here -- it is a party with an authoritarian tradition, almost a totalitarian tradition, which has been strongly criticized by us for as long as we have existed.

  But this party is transforming itself from this model of authoritarianism into a more modern pluralistic party, and that's one of the things we see as extremely positive here on Taiwan.

  We are a bit concerned that things become a bit too politicized, and the whole human-rights issue becoming a political issue between the DPP [Democratic Progressive Party] and KMT. From that perspective it's extremely unfortunate. We don't want that.

  We want all the political parties to embrace this cause, and there should be no reason for differentiation.

  TT: Could you talk about Chen's high-profile reception in the US?

  Horton: Every time I talked to the State Department, it was always, "Well of course we think very highly of President Chen," "We're delighted to see he gets this award," "he deserves this" and then, a-ha, "So what will we say to the PRC diplomats because they will be very concerned?"

  So they're [the State Department] concerned to work out something to appease China and to show that they adhere to the basic notion of sole representation of China.

  But I think it's quite clear that everyone in the foreign policy community in the US recognizes Chen Shui-bian as a democratically elected head of state of a country of 23 million people, and PRC is not a democratically elected government.

  TT: Peng Ming-min (彭明敏) [who attended a human-rights roundtable held by Academia Historica together with Horton] said that the status quo in cross-strait relationship is that Taiwan is a sovereign independent nation. What do you think of that?

  Horton: Yes, I think that's correct. As a matter of fact, Taiwan is a sovereign independent state that has democratic institutions. That's the status quo.

  The problem the people in this country see with the status quo is Taiwan's isolation from the international community, which leaves Taiwan in a very weak position to articulate its interests.

  It's difficult to see a way to reenter the international community without addressing the Taiwan question, that is, the identity of the nation as Taiwan as opposed to the Republic of China [ROC], with the name Republic of China implying a claimed direct representation of China.

  In the international legal world we have that issue come up many times before, with the Koreas and the two German states previously. Ways were found to accommodate and to deal with that issue previously.

  It can't be addressed with the People's Republic of China only because of the radical position China takes, the extreme Chinese position, the Chinese unwillingness to negotiate, bargain or discuss.

  One of the consequences of the extreme Chinese position is that it made it impossible for this country to appear on the international stage using the name China. Simply impossible.

  For the human-rights perspective, the people on Taiwan have an absolute right to decide these issues, whether they want to call themselves Republic of China or whatever. These issues are fundamental rights.

  Once you get beyond that then you do have the question still of what the international community will accept, and for instance, just the name of countries.

  For instance, when Yugoslavia fell apart, one of the constituent states of Yugoslavia declared itself as Macedonia. Greece refused absolutely to accept this name of Macedonia, saying Macedonia is a province of Greece and this is provocative -- actually the same word China uses -- and so on.

  If one country raises objections, it has the right to raise its objections and there has to be some accommodation.

  So in the case of Macedonia, it was called the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia -- a ridiculous name. That was the name everyone could agree on.

  And with ROC on Taiwan, you have just the same question. It's not the only case in the world.

  TT: Do you think Taiwan should depend so much on the US to assert its human rights?

  Horton: The answer is that it's not in the interests of any state to be totally dependent on another state for the protection of their rights. That's the fundamental point.

  People in Taiwan should pursue positive relations with the US, but they should pursue positive relations with the entire world community. And they should pursue actively membership in the world community.

  The validation of your rights against another country that's threatening or being aggressive depends again very strongly on these international mechanisms. Taiwan is exposed, not being a member of this community. This is a political question for the Taiwanese people.
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