On New Year’s Eve, the hotly anticipated Anti-infiltration Act (反滲透法) was pushed through its third reading.
The law increases the penalties for contravening the Presidential and Vice Presidential Election and Recall Act (總統副總統選舉罷免法), the Civil Servants Election and Recall Act (公職人員選罷法), the Political Donations Act (政治獻金法), the Referendum Act (公民投票法), the Lobbying Law (遊說法), the Assembly and Parade Act (集會遊行法) and the Criminal Code.
All this is something that any regular citizen would agree with, and it is something that any regular state would do. Taiwan’s democratic order does not tolerate infiltration or intervention by external enemy forces.
The law regulates action, not identity. This means that the problem is not identity, such as Taiwanese businesspeople, dependents or students, but whether the agent has been instructed, commissioned or funded by China to see to it that elections, recalls, referendums or political lobbying are influenced according to Beijing’s will, thus subverting Taiwan’s democracy and hurting national sovereignty.
The proposal of the Anti-infiltration Act sparked an outcry from pro-Chinese forces and the pan-blue camp, not to mention verbal attacks from Beijing.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) reaction to the bill stands as the most representative example.
He said that what he called the “green terror” goes far beyond the White Terror era, and that it seems as if the government is re-imposing martial law and restoring the suppression seen during the “Period of Communist Rebellion,” thus raising public fear and allowing “the specter of neo-McCarthyism to loom over Taiwan.”
Ma left out that Chinese intervention in the Nov. 24, 2018, elections was so rampant that even American Institute in Taiwan Director Brent Christensen announced that Washington was aware of China’s intention to pressure Taiwan and would work with Taipei to combat misinformation.
The greatest terror comes from the likes of Ma, who do not defend against “external hostile forces,” and their constant criticisms of the government’s efforts to protect Taiwan’s sovereignty and democratic order.
Ma and those of his ilk have said that the “green terror” is worse than the White Terror.
These offspring of the Martial Law-era Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) regime clearly have no idea of what the terror once posed by the party-state was like or simply choose not to remember it.
Academia Historica last month published a compilation of material related to the deaths of Carnegie Mellon University assistant professor Chen Wen-chen (陳文成) and former Investigation Bureau official Chiang Hai-jung (蔣海溶).
The material suggests that Chen — whose body was discovered on the campus of National Taiwan University on July 3, 1981, the day after he was questioned once again by the now-defunct Taiwan Garrison Command — was possibly murdered, and did not commit suicide to escape punishment as the command concluded.
As Chen’s “suicide” drew speculation from the public and abroad, James Soong (宋楚瑜), then director-general of the now-defunct Government Information Office, and Ma, who was serving as the English-language secretary to then-president Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國), were assigned to clarify the government’s official explanation to the international community and solve what had become a public relations crisis for it.
Ma has always downplayed the horror of the White Terror era. Perhaps he firmly believes Chen committed suicide to escape punishment.
With doctoral degrees conferred by UK and US universities, the present-day KMT elite took over vital academic and political positions upon returning to Taiwan.
Not only did the KMT focus on cultivating them, they also played devil’s advocate for the party while they studied overseas. Other young but lower-level KMT members served as student informers — euphemistically known as “professional students” (職業學生) — and helped the party blacklist many dissidents.
According to the material compiled by Academia Historica, Taiwan Garrison Command interrogators said that Chen was accused of supporting Taiwanese independence by many students who had returned home after studying overseas.
Those accusations came from none other than the KMT’s student informers or secret agents. On Dec. 20 last year, former premier Simon Chang (張善政), the KMT’s vice presidential candidate, revealed that President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) had many dangwai (黨外, “outside the party”) magazines in her room when she was studying at Cornell University.
Chang was also studying there at the time, and Tsai’s collection was no secret among other Taiwanese students. Do the likes of Chang still maintain the mindset of student informers?
The masters and followers that contributed to the White Terror era show complete disregard for the tragedies of the 1979 Kaohsiung Incident, the 1980 murder of political activist Lin I-hsiung’s (林義雄) mother and twin daughters, the 1981 death of Chen and the 1984 assassination in the US of China-born writer Henry Liu (劉宜良), who used the pen name Chiang Nan (江南).
The masters and their followers who forcefully suppressed democracy, freedom and human rights now use these very values to play down the White Terror era. They call normal rule of law “green terror” and eagerly welcome the coming of the “red terror.”
In view of the brutal violence committed by Hong Kong riot police working with triads to suppress the territory’s pro-democracy movement, it is no exaggeration to describe opposition to the Anti-infiltration Act as an attempt to prepare Taiwans’ 23 million people for the same fate as Chen and democracy advocate Lee Ming-che (李明哲), as well as Christy Chan (陳彥霖) and Alex Chow (周梓樂), who both died during the Hong Kong protests.
When Chiang Ching-kuo died in 1988 and Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) succeeded him as president, Taiwan began its democratization.
Now, as the White Terror era slips into the distant past, many Taiwanese have no experience of forced disappearances, forced confessions, framed suicides and demonization — things that are happening in China and Hong Kong today.
When these White Terror masters and their followers face transitional justice, which only seeks to uncover the historical truth of party-affiliated organizations, they hide behind the phrase “political persecution.”
The aim of transitional justice is reconciliation. It is about exposing the truth and not about the settling of political scores, yet old survivors and young adherents of the past state-party regime have panicked over it.
Their reaction is a reflection of their mindset; they only think of transitional justice as persecution because they engaged in unconscionable persecution of others in the past.
Three decades have flashed by, but the specter of the party-state still haunts the vitality of Taiwan’s democracy, national identity and cross-strait relations.
The White Terror masters and their followers are now rolling out the red carpet to welcome the “red terror.” This is an inescapable challenge and a process the nation must undergo if it is to thoroughly remold itself.
The confrontation between authoritarianism and democracy three decades ago and the political wrestling for succession to the presidency in the post-Chiang Ching-kuo era led to intensified agitation at the end of the KMT’s authoritarian rule.
Although this agitation temporarily caused fear among the public, it soon sped up the end of authoritarianism.
The party-state launched its last counterstrike on the eve of Taiwan’s democratization, and now the same group of people is opening the doors to introduce “red terror” to Taiwan.
The Anti-infiltration Act was passed in the nick of time.
Translated by Chang Ho-ming and Perry Svensson
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