Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is often nicknamed “Mother Flower (花媽)” for her resemblance to the lead character in the Japanese cartoon Atashinchi, who has a round face and a huge afro, but what lies behind Chen’s amicable smile and cartoon-like appearance is a roller-coaster ride of a life.
Born in Yilan, Chen left her mark on the nation’s democratization process by being a key figure in the Formosa Incident, also known as the Kaohsiung Incident, on Dec. 10, 1979, when a demonstration organized by opposition politicians and Formosa Magazine to commemorate Human Rights Day turned into a bloody riot.
Chen, who worked as an editor at the magazine at the time, was one of the nation’s democracy pioneers who were arrested, put on trial and jailed on charges of treason following the uprising.
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It is no exaggeration to say she sacrificed the prime of her life for the nation’s democracy as she spent her youth in prison along with other renowned political prisoners, such as former vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮).
Being one of the few female democracy pioneers back then, Chen dedicated herself to the establishment of the opposition to the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) — the DPP — after she was released in 1986.
She actively participated in the human rights movement by serving as director of the Taiwan Association for Human Rights through 1991, doubled as secretary-general of the association between 1990 and 1992, and became chairwoman of the association between 1992 and 1994.
Chen’s life took an unexpected turn in 1994, when Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) became the first opposition candidate to win a mayoral seat in Taipei.
With her experience as a human rights advocate, she was recruited by Chen Shui-bian shortly afterwards to head Taipei City’s Department of Social Welfare.
Following that, she was recruited by then-Kaohsiung mayor Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) to oversee Kaohsiung’s Bureau of Social Affairs through 2000.
She was invited to serve as minister of the Council of Labor Affairs by then-premier Tang Fei (唐飛) on May 20 of the same year.
For the next five years, she led the nation’s labor affairs agency as four premiers came and went.
Chen Chu’s career suffered a setback following a riot led by Thai laborers working for the Kaohsiung Rapid Transit Corp on Aug. 21, 2005, but she made a comeback on the political scene the next year, winning the DPP’s nomination for the Kaohsiung mayoral election and then defeating KMT candidate Huang Chun-ying (黃俊英) by the smallest of margins, 1,114 votes.
Although she suffered a minor stroke five months after she was sworn in, her political standing steadily rose as the city prepared to host the World Games.
The success of the international event last year became the highlight of her career and helped her gain momentum in the opposition party, even if her trip to China to promote the Games made her a target of criticism by pro-localization groups.
Chen Chu’s career, however, is not without controversy and an incident in September in which she admitted to have taken a 20-minute nap after inspecting flooding on the day of Typhoon Fanapi could mar her re-election bid.
“She fell asleep at home when the whole city was seriously flooded [on Sept. 19],” young Kaohsiung resident Lee Ming-chu (李明珠) said when asked of her impressions of the mayor.
“I am tired of the [fight between different] political ideologies,” Lee said.
While Chen Chu has previously been described by close friend and DPP Legislator Tien Chiu-chin (田秋堇) as “a very compassionate- -person,” Lee said she saw the mayor as a “politician” rather than a “stateswoman.”
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:
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