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.
Kenting National Park service technician Yang Jien-fon (楊政峰) won a silver award in World Grand Prix Photography Awards Spring Season for his photograph of two male rat snakes intertwined in combat. Yang’s colleagues at Kenting National Park said he is a master of nature photography who has been held back by his job in civil service. The awards accept entries in all four seasons across six categories: architectural and urban photography, black-and-white and fine art photography, commercial and fashion photography, documentary and people photography, nature and experimental photography, and mobile photography. Awards are ranked according to scores and divided into platinum, gold and
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus yesterday said it opposes the introduction of migrant workers from India until a mechanism is in place to prevent workers from absconding. Minister of Labor Hung Sun-han (洪申翰) on Thursday told the Legislative Yuan that the first group of migrant workers from India could be introduced as early as this year, as part of a government program. The caucus’ opposition to the policy is based on the assessment that “the risk is too high,” KMT caucus secretary-general Lin Pei-hsiang (林沛祥) said. Taiwan has a serious and long-standing problem of migrant workers absconding from their contracts, indicating that
SPACE VETERAN: Kjell N. Lindgren, who helps lead NASA’s human spaceflight missions, has been on two expeditions on the ISS and has spent 311 days in space Taiwan-born US astronaut Kjell N. Lindgren is to visit Taiwan to promote technological partnerships through one of the programs organized by the US for its 250th national anniversary. Lindgren would be in Taiwan from Tuesday to Saturday next week as part of the US Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs’ US Speaker Program, organized to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) said in a statement yesterday. Lindgren plans to engage with key leaders across the nation “to advance cutting-edge technological partnerships and inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers,”
RSS