Mon, Oct 18, 1999 page8

• Editorial: Pragmatism over conviction

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  It is a popular misconception that Taiwan has no prisoners of conscience but as readers of this newspaper will know that is by no means true. Twenty-four men are languishing in jail in Taiwan for their beliefs. They are not political dissidents -- that age is past, albeit but recently. They are, rather, Jehovah's Witnesses. Their crime, as Taiwan's justice system deems it, is their unwillingness to perform the military service that is compulsory for all males on the island except serious criminals or the physically or mentally incapacitated. In any Western country they would have been called conscientious objectors. They would, probably, still have to give up two years of their lives in some kind of conscripted government service, but their refusal to bear arms would be respected. But Taiwan does not recognize conscientious objection as a reason for exemption from military service.

  Of course this sensitivity to people's moral conscience in Western countries is a comparatively recent development. The philosopher Bertrand Russell, for example, was jailed by the British government during WWI for refusing to fight. But what is interesting about his case is the difficulty most Taiwanese have in understanding the position of these young men.

  One of the most interesting things about this situation is that so few Taiwanese can understand why these young men would rather spend years in jail, sometimes several times the length of the compulsory military service period, for their beliefs. After all, the armed forces are willing to help these young men as much as the law allows. They would not be asked to undergo combat training and would be assigned to non-combatant posts. How more reasonable could you get? they ask. And in Taiwan that is a hard argument to answer.

  If there is any one character trait that singles Taiwanese out as a people, it is their overwhelming pragmatism. Nothing is ever believed in so strongly that it is worth getting into serious strife for. Of course there are honorable exceptions, of which DPP legislator Shih Ming-teh, who endured 26 years in jail for advocating that Taiwanese should be allowed to govern themselves, is the most famous. Yet Shih's subsequent post-jail political career is almost proof that self-sacrifice for an ideal is simply not something that Taiwanese understand. Compare his exile on the legislature's back benches with the career of Nelson Mandela and see a deep Taiwanese suspicion of people who don't know when to compromise.

  Sometimes this is not such a bad thing. In Taiwan, abortion, for example, is a practical matter, not something over which one would expect people to gun down doctors. In fact, the expression "this for me is a matter of principle" is unlikely to gain the speaker respect so much as a quizzical look and a reputation for being stubbornly uncooperative. Martin Luther, with his immovable "here I stand, I can do no other" would appear in modern Taiwan as a most unreasonable fellow. And had Europe reacted to Luther as Taiwan would today, an astounding amount of bloodshed might have been avoided. Another example: In the early 1990s, zealots such as Jaw Shao-kong whipped up ethnic tensions that could have reduced Taiwan to the situation of Northern Ireland, even Kosovo. But Taiwanese, whatever grievances they may harbor, don't kill people over history or ideology; ideas are not something that, in the long run, matter enough.

  But there is a negative result to this pragmatism, and that is the shoulder-shrugging it gives rise to, the feeling that so much can't be changed because fighting involves a degree of conviction that so many people see no need for. Corruption? Shrug. Pollution? Shrug. Bureaucratic inefficiency and waste? That's the way things are, learn to live within the system. To which the obvious question can only be: How is society ever to improve when so many people reject challenge and commitment in favor of compromise?
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