This week, Taiwan is remembering that 40 years ago, on Dec. 10, 1979, the Formosa Incident, also known as the Kaohsiung Incident, took place.
Most people are familiar with what happened: Democracy leaders associated with Formosa Magazine organized a Human Rights Day rally in Kaohsiung. The event resulted in chaos when police surrounded the crowd and started to use tear gas.
Taiwan was still under martial law, which began in 1949, and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) regime arrested virtually all opposition leaders, charging them with “sedition” and “attempting to overthrow the government.”
The rest is history: The relatives of the imprisoned opposition leaders and the lawyers who defended them formed the vanguard of the subsequent dangwai (黨外, “outside the party”) democracy movement.
The movement sprouted a number of dangwai magazines, which quickly became popular, and were therefore banned and confiscated by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) authorities. From 1981 through 1985 an increasingly intense tug-of-war played out between the police and these dangwai magazines, which used a series of innovative moves — such as “spare-tire” titles — to keep publishing and getting the uncensored version of the news to the public.
In 1986, a young half-mainlander activist, Deng Nan-jung (鄭南榕), added a new dynamic to the equation. With his publication Freedom Era Weekly, he started the “Green Ribbon Campaign”: increasingly large street demonstrations for freedom and democracy, and for the end of martial law.
The present street demonstrations in Hong Kong are reminiscent of those in Taipei in 1986.
In addition to pressure from the grassroots level, Taiwan’s democracy movement of the 1980s had important support from abroad: In the US and Europe, the overseas Taiwanese community coalesced after the Kaohsiung Incident through organizations such as the Formosan Association for Public Affairs (FAPA). They were effective in getting members of US Congress and European parliaments to speak out for human rights and democracy.
In the US Congress in particular, then-US senators Ted Kennedy and Claiborne Pell, and then-US representatives Stephen Solarz and Jim Leach — known as the “Gang of Four” — were outspoken in their support of human rights and democracy, and critical of the imprisonment of the democracy leaders and of the continued existence of martial law.
What is less well-known is that then-president Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) was eventually pressured into ending martial law on July 14, 1987, and the nation transitioned to democracy under the presidency of Lee Teng-hui (李登輝).
Thus, in retrospect, the Kaohsiung Incident laid the foundation for this momentous transition. Taiwanese can be thankful that it was a relatively peaceful change.
At the same time, those who made the ultimate sacrifice must be remembered: Lin I-hsiung (林義雄), whose mother and twin daughters were murdered in their home in broad daylight on Feb. 28, 1980, while their house was under strict police surveillance; Carnegie Mellon University assistant professor Chen Wen-chen (陳文成), who was found dead at National Taiwan University on July 3, 1981, after having been “interviewed” by the Taiwan Garrison Command; Deng, who set himself on fire rather than being arrested by police storming into his office on April 7, 1989; and Dr Wang Kang-lu (王康陸), a leading Taiwanese-American independence activist who died in a mysterious “car accident” in Taipei on Oct. 12, 1993.
In addition to laying the foundation for Taiwan’s democracy, the Kaohsiung Incident and its aftermath also played an important role in cementing international support for Taiwan and its vibrant democracy. It showed the world that Taiwanese were willing and able to build a stable, multi-party democratic system.
This new and democratic Taiwan is now a beacon of hope in East Asia, in particular for the people of Hong Kong who are fighting so courageously for their own democracy. Taiwan is a mirror for them, showing what can be achieved if they persist.
On a personal note: The Kaohsiung Incident also represents a turning point in my life, as it marked the beginning of a life-long quest in support of Taiwan’s democracy and acceptance by the international community as a full and equal member. In the process, my wife and I published our Taiwan Communique (www.taiwandc.org/twcom/) for 35 years.
Gerrit van der Wees is a former Dutch diplomat. From 1980 through 2016 he served as chief editor of Taiwan Communique, a publication dedicated to human rights and democracy in Taiwan.
When Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping (習近平) wakes up one morning and decides that his People’s Liberation Army (PLA) can win a war to conquer Taiwan, that is when his war will begin. To ensure that Xi never gains that confidence it is now necessary for the United States to shed any notions of “forbearance” in arms sales to Taiwan. Largely because they could guarantee military superiority on the Taiwan Strait, US administrations from Jimmy Carter to Barack Obama practiced “forbearance” — pre-emptive limitation of arms sales to Taiwan — in hopes of gaining diplomatic leverage with Beijing. President Ronald
As the US marks one month under the leadership of President Joe Biden, the conversations around Taiwan have shifted. As I discussed in a Taipei Times article (“No more talk of ‘bargaining chips,’” Jan. 30, page 8), with the end of former US president Donald Trump’s administration — and all of the unpredictability associated with it — Taiwan would not have to worry about being used as a “bargaining chip” in some sort of deal with the People’s Republic of China. The talk of Taiwan being used as a bargaining chip never subsided over those four years, but under Biden, those
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lin Wei-chou (林為洲) talked about “opposing the Chinese Communist Party [CCP]” in a recent Facebook post, writing that opposing the CCP is not the special reserve of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Not long after, many people within the KMT received a mysterious letter signed “Chinese Nationalist Party Central Committee” containing what looked like a declaration of opposition to, and a call to arms against, the CCP. Unexpectedly, the KMT’s Culture and Communications Committee came forward with a clarification, saying that the letter was not sent by the KMT and telling the public not to believe
The Canadian parliament on Monday passed a motion saying that China’s human rights abuses against the country’s Uighur Muslim population in Xinjiang constitute “genocide.” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has so far avoided using the word genocide in regard to Xinjiang, but if he did, it would begin to generate solidarity among G7 nations on the issue — which is something Trudeau has called for. Former US president Donald Trump used the word genocide regarding Xinjiang before leaving office last month, and members of US President Joe Biden’s administration have been pushing for him to make the same declaration, a Reuters report