Since March 20, pan-blue groups have been bringing constant complaints about what they call "Bulletgate" to the international community. A pan-blue fringe organization recently sent an e-mail to all members of the US Congress comparing President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) to Adolf Hitler. Green-camp legislators have hit back, saying that the blue camp is discrediting Taiwan. The Foundation for the Advancement of Media Excellence (新聞公害防治基金會) has said that another international complaint by a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) think tank, Press Freedom in Taiwan Endangered (陷入險境的台灣新文自由), also promotes falsehoods.
The internationalization of domestic issues in an attempt to get the international community to mediate is a common occurrence. The problem is not that complaints are brought to the international community, but rather that the statements are untrue. In the past, the KMT complained that the tangwai (黨外, outside the party) movement internationalized its complaints, and now the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) complains that the KMT is doing the same thing. Although such a change may be ironic, it is a political reality.
During decades of martial-law rule, the KMT kept a tight grip on the state apparatus. Trying to protect themselves and realize their ideals, could dissidents afford not to take their complaints abroad? If not for US intervention, wouldn't members of the tangwai movement such as Lei Chen (雷震), Bo Yang (柏楊), Li Ao (李敖), Sun Li-jen (孫立人) and Peng Ming-min (彭明敏) have been extinguished? And without international intervention, would Chinese dissidents such as Wang Dan (王丹) and Wei Jingsheng (魏京生) still be alive today?
With increasing globalization, people from every country can air their grievances beyond their nation's borders, in some cases getting the UN to intervene to stop genocide and political repression. International pressure brought an end to racial apartheid in South Africa and stopped the massacres in former Yugoslavia. Without international concern, there would still be violence in East Timor, Iraq would still occupy Kuwait and Taiwan would have been swallowed up by China. Didn't Chen Shui-bian also appeal to the UN press corps to accuse China of suppressing Taiwan?
The method by which a complaint is brought to international attention may not be important, but it is extremely important to establish the facts. If too many of your complaints turn out to be unfounded, they will be very quickly revealed in this information age. And then, just like in the story where a boy cried wolf once too often, no one will believe you later on.
By comparing Chen to Adolf Hitler, the blue camp has violated the facts. Although Taiwan is purchasing arms from the US, these purchases are aimed at self-defense. No foreigner would believe that Chen is another Hitler. Such a negative campaign is a simply stupie, the same thing as shooting oneself in the foot or slapping one's own face.
The blue camp's Bulletgate booklet was not very smart either. How could one unearth the facts without an investigation? Besides, how can such an argument convince people when it contradicts the judgment of the pan-blues' chosen forensic expert, Henry Lee (李昌鈺)?
As for the question of whether press freedom in Taiwan has regressed, a conclusion can hardly be reached since different people have very different feelings about the matter. Nevertheless, the government has never cracked down on press freedom through any political means, and has only demanded that the KMT return its broadcasting licenses because of the KMT-owned monopoly created in the past, when there was no separation between party and state. Such a counterattack by vested interests lacks legitimacy and is immoral. What's more, Reporters Sans Frontieres praised the nation as a model of press freedom in its latest report published this year. What good will it do to wash one's dirty linen abroad anyway? It will only irritate others, and expose our own defects.
Monday was the 37th anniversary of former president Chiang Ching-kuo’s (蔣經國) death. Chiang — a son of former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), who had implemented party-state rule and martial law in Taiwan — has a complicated legacy. Whether one looks at his time in power in a positive or negative light depends very much on who they are, and what their relationship with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is. Although toward the end of his life Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law and steered Taiwan onto the path of democratization, these changes were forced upon him by internal and external pressures,
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) has caused havoc with his attempts to overturn the democratic and constitutional order in the legislature. If we look at this devolution from the context of a transition to democracy from authoritarianism in a culturally Chinese sense — that of zhonghua (中華) — then we are playing witness to a servile spirit from a millennia-old form of totalitarianism that is intent on damaging the nation’s hard-won democracy. This servile spirit is ingrained in Chinese culture. About a century ago, Chinese satirist and author Lu Xun (魯迅) saw through the servile nature of
In their New York Times bestseller How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt said that democracies today “may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders. Many government efforts to subvert democracy are ‘legal,’ in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy — making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process.” Moreover, the two authors observe that those who denounce such legal threats to democracy are often “dismissed as exaggerating or
The National Development Council (NDC) on Wednesday last week launched a six-month “digital nomad visitor visa” program, the Central News Agency (CNA) reported on Monday. The new visa is for foreign nationals from Taiwan’s list of visa-exempt countries who meet financial eligibility criteria and provide proof of work contracts, but it is not clear how it differs from other visitor visas for nationals of those countries, CNA wrote. The NDC last year said that it hoped to attract 100,000 “digital nomads,” according to the report. Interest in working remotely from abroad has significantly increased in recent years following improvements in
RSS