The letter from the Taiwanese Canadian Social Service Center (Letters, June 4, page 8) on the fostering of a strong Taiwanese consciousness was very disturbing, for the examples the writers used were all from extremely fascist societies: Germany, Poland and Ukraine.
Further the article acknowledged a "cultural debt" to China and Japan, which are both extremely fascist societies with authoritarian cultures. The idea that Taiwanese identity owes a cultural debt in a positive sense to China or Japan is questionable. Indeed the negative aspects of those cultures remain quite strong in Taiwan.
For example, the president had no difficulty ordering official disobedience in the face of the unconstitutional March 19 Shooting Truth Investigation Special Committee Statute, because it was politically expedient to do so.
There is no reason why the government should not also choose to regard the unconstitutional provisions of the Household Registration Act's mandatory national fingerprinting requirements as ineffective from the get-go.
The government wrongly, unconstitutionally and arrogantly believes that anything they feel is in the public interest may lawfully override the rights and provisions of the Constitution. Another example of fascism in Taiwan is the household registration system, enforced by authoritarian Asian societies to this day. The police and the state do not have the right to regard average citizens carrying out their daily lives as criminals.
The fascist aspects of the Chinese and Japanese negative cultural vestiges on Taiwan must be uprooted and overturned. The battle for Taiwanese independence is the battle for the respect of the human rights of all persons of Asian and Pacific Island heritage.
But until the people of Taiwan themselves stand up and reject the fascist and Chinese cultural origins of much of their Taiwanese independence movement, including those such as Lin Cho-shui (
Profound respect for such individuality is not only conducive to stronger social cohesion, it is essential to achieving just and equitable social welfare and charity, something almost entirely lacking from Taiwan's dog-eat-dog, get rich at all costs Chinese cultural mentality.
First there was The Ugly American, then there was Bo Yang's (
Further, those fascists who engaged in crimes against humanity on Formosa for decades from the 228 Incident through the White Terror must be brought to justice for their crimes against humanity.
The claims of Taiwanese independence advocates in the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) who desire to make peace with the fascist Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) members, and refuse to employ the judicial resources of the state to bring the fascists to justice, in the name of "cultural, ethnic and national origin reconciliation" are absurd and immoral to the core.
One does not reconcile with fascist murderers: one brings them to justice. When Taiwan is just and dedicated to justice, then and only then will it merit the recognition of its true identity as a free and independent, sovereign people, living freely and independently in their own state. The hypocrisy of anything less is obvious, and will stain forever the claims of those who seek a just recognition of their equal humanity as a nation among the states of the world.
Paul Maas Risenhoover
Special Adviser for International Law, Permanent Mission of Tuvalu to the UN
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 Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus in the Legislative Yuan has made an internal decision to freeze NT$1.8 billion (US$54.7 million) of the indigenous submarine project’s NT$2 billion budget. This means that up to 90 percent of the budget cannot be utilized. It would only be accessible if the legislature agrees to lift the freeze sometime in the future. However, for Taiwan to construct its own submarines, it must rely on foreign support for several key pieces of equipment and technology. These foreign supporters would also be forced to endure significant pressure, infiltration and influence from Beijing. In other words,
“I compare the Communist Party to my mother,” sings a student at a boarding school in a Tibetan region of China’s Qinghai province. “If faith has a color,” others at a different school sing, “it would surely be Chinese red.” In a major story for the New York Times this month, Chris Buckley wrote about the forced placement of hundreds of thousands of Tibetan children in boarding schools, where many suffer physical and psychological abuse. Separating these children from their families, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) aims to substitute itself for their parents and for their religion. Buckley’s reporting is
Last week, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), together holding more than half of the legislative seats, cut about NT$94 billion (US$2.85 billion) from the yearly budget. The cuts include 60 percent of the government’s advertising budget, 10 percent of administrative expenses, 3 percent of the military budget, and 60 percent of the international travel, overseas education and training allowances. In addition, the two parties have proposed freezing the budgets of many ministries and departments, including NT$1.8 billion from the Ministry of National Defense’s Indigenous Defense Submarine program — 90 percent of the program’s proposed
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