Thirty years after military police clashed with supporters of the democracy movement in Kaohsiung, the event still evoked strong emotions and memories in academics, witnesses and political leaders yesterday at a forum held to mark the protest known as the “Kaohsiung Incident.”
Lee Shiao-feng (李筱峰), a professor at National Taipei University of Education’s Graduate School of Taiwan Culture and a long-time pro-independence activist, recounted his experience as a participant in the Incident, saying the streets were filled with protesters eager to see political change and an end to authoritarian rule.
“It wasn’t a single Incident — it was the culmination of 20 to 30 years of the pro-democracy movement,” Lee told the forum in Taipei. “The people rebelled against an authoritarian government ... the more [protesters] the [government] arrested, the more people came out to support [the protest].”
The Incident started when the pro-democracy Formosa Magazine (美麗島雜誌) held a demonstration commemorating International Human Rights Day on Dec. 10, 1979, in Kaohsiung, calling on then-Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government to respect human rights and demanding democracy. Within hours, the protesters were surrounded by scores of military police, while prominent leaders of the democracy movement were arrested.
Of the 51 arrests made, eight, including Shih Ming-teh (施明德), Chang Chun-hsiung (張俊雄), Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) and Chen Chu (陳菊), were tried in a military court and received sentences ranging from 12 years to life imprisonment. The remaining 43 were tried in civilian courts and received two to seven-year sentences.
At the forum yesterday, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) praised the protesters for their dedication and sacrifice in leading the nation to a democratic transition.
“In the 30 years since the Incident, many things have changed ... but their dedication to our nation and its democracy has not,” Tsai said. “Their sacrifices have allowed us as a society to develop and increased our own recognition of this country.”
She said that it was because of the dissidents that pressure grew on the government to eventually lift martial law and lift the bans on independent political parties and media, which led to the country’s democratization.
Tsai is one of the few people to have held the chair of the DPP without having been either a defendant or lawyer involved in the Incident.
Other participants in the Incident, such as defense lawyers Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) went on to become president and premier respectively, while defendant Annette Lu, who was sentenced to 12 years in prison, later became vice president.
“Thirty years ago, we gathered to let the KMT know that we wanted the fate of our nation to be decided by us, the Taiwanese ... we wanted change and expressed it through a popular movement,” Lu said, adding that “the lessons of that day are every bit as important today.”
The Kaohsiung City Government is planning a series of activities to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Kaohsiung Incident to be held until Dec. 20, including seminars on human rights, a photo exhibition, a concert and a party.
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
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
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