Communist or Taiwan independence advocate; ethnic Taiwanese native or Mainlander.
It didn't matter. If the authoritarian government of dictator Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) believed you were a dissident, you could be locked up for decades or even executed.
“We're good buddies, we're brothers,” 84-year-old Huang Kuang-hai (黃廣海) said, putting his arm around 85-year-old Kue Chin-sun (郭振純), both of them smiling.
The two men — along with dozens of other former political prisoners incarcerated on Green Island — returned to the island recently, decades after their release to attend the inauguration of a reconstructed New Life Correction Center (新生訓導處).
Taiwan was officially under martial law from 1949 until 1987. From the 1950s thousands of political prisoners were kept first at the New Life Correction Center and then Oasis Village (綠洲山莊).
While it may seem perfectly normal for two former political prisoners to call each other friends, the relationship is more surprising when one learns about their backgrounds.
Huang was born in Guangzhou, China, in 1926, and came to Taiwan in 1950 as a soldier when the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) retreated after losing the civil war against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Although he was with KMT troops, Huang had always been fond of communism and to this date, the unification of Taiwan and China is still his biggest dream.
On the other hand, Kue is an ethnic Taiwanese born in 1925 and a diehard advocate of Taiwan independence.
“We're good buddies because we were both jailed for more than 20 years and for the most part, we were jailed together ... Of course we have different political views, but political views didn't really play a role when we lived together, worked together and helped each other out as political prisoners,” Huang said.
“We knew we disagreed with each other on ideology, so we never talked too much about it,” he added.
Although Huang was a CCP sympathizer, he never actually participated in any organization or political activities related to the party.
“I was sentenced to life in prison for complaining about Chiang Kai-shek in letters to friends in Hong Kong ... In those letters, I complained that Chiang was a dictator and the KMT regime was an authoritarian one,” he said.
“I was in the military at the time and they always checked what we wrote in letters — especially if the letters were going abroad — so they decided to charge me with 'repeatedly spreading false rumors' and sentenced me to life in prison,” he said.
Huang was sent to prison in 1954 and did not get out until 1975 when an amnesty was declared after Chiang passed away on April 5 that year.
During those 21 years, he was incarcerated in six prisons — two different Taiwan Garrison Command detention centers in Taipei City; the Ankeng Military Prison (安坑軍人監獄) in Sindian City (新店), Taipei County; the New Life Correction Center and the Oasis Village on Green Island; and Taiyuan Prison (泰源監獄) in Donghe Township (東河), Taitung County.
It was at Taiyuan and on Green Island that Huang met Kue.
Although Kue, was one of the many young Taiwanese who took up arms to fight the KMT following the 228 Incident in 1947, he escaped the mass arrests and executions that followed. He was less fortunate during the Martial Law Era.
In 1951, Kue campaigned for non-KMT candidate Yeh Ting-kuei (葉廷珪) in his victorious bid for Tainan City mayor. After the election, someone reported to the secret service that Yeh was connected to Thomas Liao (廖文毅), a Taiwan independence movement leader who formed the Provisional Government of the Republic of Formosa in Japan.
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