Former US missionary Milo Thornberry warned Washington about the danger of a second “conspiracy of silence” sweeping over Taiwan.
Thornberry, who was a central figure in helping human rights leader Peng Ming-min (彭明敏) escape from Taiwan during the years of the White Terror, said “shadows from the past” could be returning.
At a lecture to the George Washington University Taiwan Forum and later as keynote speaker at the Thanksgiving dinner of the Taiwanese Association of Greater Washington on Saturday, Thornberry spoke about his fears for the future.
Thornberry went to Taiwan as a missionary of the Methodist Church at the end of 1965 and over the next few years — as recounted in his recently published book Fireproof Moth — secretly distributed money to the families of political prisoners.
He and his wife also worked to inform the outside world of the torture, the executions and the repression practiced under the Martial Law era regime of Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石).
In particular, he collaborated with Peng and two former students — Hsieh Tsung-min (謝聰敏) and Wei Ting-chao (魏廷朝) — who were both arrested, “horribly tortured,” tried in a secret court and served long prison terms.
At the time, Taiwan was awash with Americans — missionaries, students, teachers, military and US State Department personnel, businesspeople and tourists — and yet they did almost nothing to stop the White Terror, he said.
Back in the US, Americans did not know what was happening because of what Thornberry called “a conspiracy of silence.”
“There were a few voices who reported the corruption and brutality of Chiang and the Nationalists, but their voices were lost in the deafening crescendo of anti--communism in the US,” Thornberry said.
“Anti-communism justified the US’ decision to look the other way when it came to White Terror,” he said.
There was, he said, a “callous disregard of human rights by our own State Department.”
He said that the “shadows” from the period of martial law had a bearing on the diverging views of Taiwan’s future.
After democratization in Taiwan, none of the officials responsible for the White Terror were brought to account, Thornberry said.
“Since the election of the [President] Ma [Ying-jeou (馬英九)] administration, not much has been heard from it about the period of White Terror,” he added.
“Does the KMT [Chinese Nationalist Party] simply want to forget that period, believing that younger generations who didn’t experience White Terror will not care about it?” he asked.
However, he said, until this past is acknowledged openly and dealt with justly, “I wonder if Taiwan can live into the future without denial.”
“The shadows of the conspiracy of silence also fall on the US government,” he added.
“Some in today’s administration seem little more concerned about the hopes and aspirations of the Taiwanese people than they were during the period of White Terror,” he said.
“Although they knew the reality, they deemed it in the US national interest to disregard the Taiwanese people in favor of Chiang Kai-shek,” Thornberry said.
“Now, I fear that the Taiwanese people’s interests are disregarded because of US interests in China, not to mention the complication of our indebtedness to China. The issues now and then are different, but the readiness to disregard the will of the Taiwanese people is the same,” he said.
Thornberry asked whose side the US was really on.
“Are we on the side of a democratic Taiwan or that of a repressive China? Are we letting China dictate what constitutes stability? Is the past even past?” he asked.
“I believe the struggle for justice will continue in Taiwan in and beyond the elections of Jan. 14, 2012. Unless we choose to be blind, as the citizens of the US were when White Terror reigned, our people and our institutions of government need also to come to terms with our past in Taiwan,” he said.
“That’s no small task,” Thornberry said.
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
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
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