Lung Ying-tai (龍應台) is a complex woman. Widely hailed as an important voice in Taiwan for democracy during the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) authoritarian era, more recently she has been condemned by some as a tool for China.
Clearly mindful of her upbringing in the world of the KMT martial law dictatorship, she has also become a sharp critic of President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), the arch anti-KMT politician, in recent years. And, while she has been a prominent Taiwanese writer and professor, she has also published in major Chinese newspapers for 15 years and teaches at the University of Hong Kong.
On Thursday, Lung was in Washington to berate the international community for not helping Taiwan out of the global isolation imposed on it by Beijing and, indeed, for acquiescing to it and to twit Taiwan for not doing enough on its own behalf to break out of that isolation.
"Are the Taiwanese being punished for their democracy?" Lung asked dozens of senior diplomats, academics and international affairs experts in a presentation on China-Taiwan relations at a seminar on worldviews and human rights sponsored by the Swedish embassy and foreign ministry.
In the 37 years of martial law after 1950, she recalled, the people of Taiwan "were sent straight into isolation" by China and the nations of the world.
"The global village looks on as the children of Taiwan, generation after generation, grow up in the global village but denied global citizenship and deprived of dignity," she said.
"In China's search for modernity, Taiwan democracy has always been the most important reference," she said.
"If a democratic China is essential for world peace, then it is urgent that the global village do the pre-emptive work to prevent war, which means that the young democracy of Taiwan has to be cared for by the world community and the isolation has to stop," she said.
Five ambassadors, senior diplomats from 27 other embassies, and a large number of European foreign ministry officials and representatives of the EU signed up for the symposium at the Swedish embassy, "Worldviews, International Relations and Globalization," giving Lung a broad diplomatic audience for her plea for help for Taiwan.
Later, in an interview with the Taipei Times, Lung said that instead of punishing Taiwan and bowing to Beijing's efforts to isolate it, "the world community should actually encourage Taiwan, protect Taiwan, and really take a hard look at the situation the Taiwanese are in."
Lung said that there has been some international response to Taiwan's plight, "but I think it would take some very determined act from some world leaders who really confront the situation," for things to change.
Turning to Taiwan's own response, Lung said, "I think the Taiwanese are too timid in voicing [their concerns] and telling the world how frustrated they are. The world community is not aware what this long isolation is doing to the psyche to this group of people."
She also saw the isolation poisoning cross-strait relations.
"I think it is really going to turn out very negatively in terms of cross-strait relations, because it is going to make the Taiwanese even more hostile toward China. And that is something that nobody wants to see," she said.
For China, on its part, the Beijing leadership "are not very aware of what this isolation and ostracization is doing to the Taiwanese, and how it is have a very negative impact on cross-strait relations," she said.
Lung complained that Taiwan has to "bribe" other nations to keep diplomatic ties.
"When political leaders want to visit other nations, they have to go incognito and still would be humiliated like orphans no one accepts," she said.
She also said that years of isolation has given Taiwanese "a sense of alienation from the global village."
She pointed to a recent opinion poll in Taipei, in which 80 percent of respondents didn't know where the UN headquarters was located, 60 percent did not know on which continent Athens was located, 80 percent did not know where the Nobel Prize was awarded and 60 percent did not know Germany's currency, for example.
These results showed, Lung said, that decades of isolation have denied the Taiwanese the "right to social and cultural life in the world community."
This, in turn, violates the UN universal declaration of human rights, the world's basic human rights document.
"Everybody" is entitled to basic rights and freedoms, the declaration states. "No distinction" should be made on the basis of the "political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty," Lung quoted the document as saying.
Taiwan, by the nature of its global isolation, is denied these rights because the world complies with Beijing's isolation campaign, she said.
A year-long renovation of Taipei’s Bangka Park (艋舺公園) began yesterday, as city workers fenced off the site and cleared out belongings left by homeless residents who had been living there. Despite protests from displaced residents, a city official defended the government’s relocation efforts, saying transitional housing has been offered. The renovation of the park in Taipei’s Wanhua District (萬華), near Longshan Temple (龍山寺), began at 9am yesterday, as about 20 homeless people packed their belongings and left after being asked to move by city personnel. Among them was a 90-year-old woman surnamed Wang (王), who last week said that she had no plans
TO BE APPEALED: The environment ministry said coal reduction goals had to be reached within two months, which was against the principle of legitimate expectation The Taipei High Administrative Court on Thursday ruled in favor of the Taichung Environmental Protection Bureau in its administrative litigation against the Ministry of Environment for the rescission of a NT$18 million fine (US$609,570) imposed by the bureau on the Taichung Power Plant in 2019 for alleged excess coal power generation. The bureau in November 2019 revised what it said was a “slip of the pen” in the text of the operating permit granted to the plant — which is run by Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) — in October 2017. The permit originally read: “reduce coal use by 40 percent from Jan.
China might accelerate its strategic actions toward Taiwan, the South China Sea and across the first island chain, after the US officially entered a military conflict with Iran, as Beijing would perceive Washington as incapable of fighting a two-front war, a military expert said yesterday. The US’ ongoing conflict with Iran is not merely an act of retaliation or a “delaying tactic,” but a strategic military campaign aimed at dismantling Tehran’s nuclear capabilities and reshaping the regional order in the Middle East, said National Defense University distinguished adjunct lecturer Holmes Liao (廖宏祥), former McDonnell Douglas Aerospace representative in Taiwan. If
‘SPEY’ REACTION: Beijing said its Eastern Theater Command ‘organized troops to monitor and guard the entire process’ of a Taiwan Strait transit China sent 74 warplanes toward Taiwan between late Thursday and early yesterday, 61 of which crossed the median line in the Taiwan Strait. It was not clear why so many planes were scrambled, said the Ministry of National Defense, which tabulated the flights. The aircraft were sent in two separate tranches, the ministry said. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday “confirmed and welcomed” a transit by the British Royal Navy’s HMS Spey, a River-class offshore patrol vessel, through the Taiwan Strait a day earlier. The ship’s transit “once again [reaffirmed the Strait’s] status as international waters,” the foreign ministry said. “Such transits by