A Malaysian who had been wrongfully imprisoned in Taiwan is planning to organize a banquet at Taipei’s Liberty Square at the end of this month to promote greater awareness about the plight of political victims and the homeless.
Chin Him-san (陳欽生), a Malaysian of Hakka descent, studied at the National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan and was preparing to travel to the UK to start his doctoral studies when he was arrested by the then-Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government in 1971 for a bomb explosion at the US Information Service in Tainan.
Chin, who was 21 at the time, said that although intelligence service personnel found that he had nothing to do with the explosion, the government kept him imprisoned because it refused to acknowledge that it had arrested the wrong person.
Photo: Huang Ming-tang, Taipei Times
Chin was incarcerated for 12 years, spending time in prisons in Taipei and on Green Island. When he was released at the age of 33, the then-Taiwan Garrison Command refused to process his passport so he could go home, while also denying him help to apply for a national identification card.
Without an identification card, Chin said he was deprived of working opportunities.
While he was entitled to a small subsidy, he refused to take the money, he said.
“I am not a beggar. I wanted an identification card, not their subsidy,” he said.
For more than two years, Chin said he lived on the streets and made his living by doing small jobs.
Even at his most difficult times, he refused to beg for money, he said.
After long years of petitioning the Taiwanese government and even threatening to commit suicide, Chin finally received his identification card.
Chin said that during his years of hardship he was fortunate to have met a chef who always cooked an extra portion for him every day.
He has since lost contact with the man, but remembers how the man helped save his dignity, Chin said.
He said he therefore plans to organize a banquet at Liberty Square on Feb. 29 for political victims like him and the homeless, because he believes even the simplest action of giving can help another survive.
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