The incident in which Taiwan's first lady, Wu Shu-chen (
Reports in the media focused solely on the damage done to the nation's dignity. Apart from highlighting its principles and determination to uphold those principles, they completely neglected the important lesson of this incident for all people seeking freedom of movement in the abnormal state of affairs that is the "war on terror."
Wu's security check was not an isolated incident. Rather, it was the product of a new US national security policy developed since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The US government is practicing population control in the name of national security. The question of who these controls are aimed at often involves the problem of defining "outsider" status. Indeed, in today's highly mobile and unstable society, it is very difficult to identify precisely who is an "outsider." Working definitions seem to hover around various markers of status in society, such as class, race, gender and citizenship.
Undeniably, some of these markers are more likely to attract the attention of national security organs than others. As everyone knows, since Sept. 11 anyone of Middle Eastern background has had a much greater chance of being subjected to a security check, regardless of whether or not he has US citizenship.
Interestingly, in response to the US war on terror, Taiwan's government has adopted the same tactics, in other words mobilizing the national security system to monitor "suspicious" foreigners, especially Middle Easterners. (Looked at from this angle, a series of recent government measures relating to status and national security -- including the handling of Chinese brides, immigrants to Matsu and Taiwanese residing in China -- are all actually bolstering the logic of "anti-terrorism," a fact which certainly deserves to be discussed more widely.)
No doubt with US encouragement, similar measures for monitoring Middle Easterners have already quietly become informal guidelines for the security agencies in many countries, even to the extent of becoming the primary object of international police cooperation.
Equating "status" and "national security" in this way on the international level and making a particular social status the rationale for police monitoring, thereby affecting the activities, property and privacy of a particular group, smacks of a kind of racial "solution" taking shape on a global scale. Viewed from this angle, the incident of the first lady being subjected to a security check in the US is merely one part of a larger pattern. No wonder the US is unhappy with the media (and the ruling DPP) for publicizing the incident.
To consolidate a sense of national identity, the authorities have actively emulated US anti-terrorist measures, increasing their controls over the activities of "outsiders" of all sorts (naturally including foreigners and Chinese nationals who collectively make up four percent of the population) and even adopting US methods of racial profiling.
They have no grounds to complain about US high-handedness. What Taiwan really needs is to come up with alternatives to a "conspiracy between nations."
Jon Solomon is an assistant professor in the Program in Futures Studies at Tamkang University
Translated by Ethan Harkness
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