The security measures that the Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) government has implemented for the arrival of Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林) must be awakening a sense of dread in anyone old enough to have lived in the Martial Law era under dictator Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石).
In fact, so ostentatious was the presence of police and National Security Bureau officers at critical venues along Chen’s path from Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport to the Grand Hotel in Shilin (士林) that the Chinese envoy must have felt right at home.
The Ma administration’s argument that such measures were the direct consequence of the Democratic Progressive Party’s “mobbing” of ARATS Vice Chairman Zhang Mingqing (張銘清) in Tainan last week is obfuscation, as police are not only protecting the envoy but also muzzling freedom of speech by forbidding people from displaying the national flag, banners with political content or symbols of Chinese oppression, such as the Tibetan flag.
What’s even more worrying is that the security apparatus seems to have quickly reverted to the random, unclear rules upon which authoritarian regimes depend to keep their opponents on edge. In other words, while the government tells Taiwanese not to fret over the meetings, it has unleashed the tool of fear to unbalance detractors. Days ahead of Chen’s arrival, demonstrators didn’t know whether they would be arrested for activities that in the past two decades did not constitute breaking the law.
Barbed wire at key intersections, demonstrators manhandled by police without cause, a young woman’s finger broken as police pried a Tibetan flag from her hands and arrested her — this is the stuff of news in China, not Taiwan.
After years of democratization and transformation of the security apparatus into an instrument of the state rather than the private army of a political party, officers that a year ago could not have imagined themselves doing the things that they did yesterday have become a tool of state oppression.
The great British thinker Bertrand Russell, who had a lifelong interest in the uses of power, once referred to a phenomenon that could be summed up as the “anonymity of the flock,” in which the individual is capable of committing actions that are out of character because of the “deresponsibilization” that the context provides them. Being part of an organization — especially in the security apparatus — weakens one’s moral barriers and allows for the perpetration of unspeakable acts. A police officer is merely following orders and doing his job, which he could lose if he refused to comply with directives from the top.
When this happens, otherwise decent human beings are capable of just about anything.
Taiwan hasn’t reached the extremes of this phenomenon, but the seeds are there and the leadership — the moral compass in any institution — has shown its willingness to use force against its own people, assaulting a harmless 34-year-old woman in the process. And yesterday was only the first day of Chen’s visit.
The pendulum of freedom cannot be allowed to swing back in a direction that has caused this nation so much suffering in the past.
US President Donald Trump has gotten off to a head-spinning start in his foreign policy. He has pressured Denmark to cede Greenland to the United States, threatened to take over the Panama Canal, urged Canada to become the 51st US state, unilaterally renamed the Gulf of Mexico to “the Gulf of America” and announced plans for the United States to annex and administer Gaza. He has imposed and then suspended 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico for their roles in the flow of fentanyl into the United States, while at the same time increasing tariffs on China by 10
As an American living in Taiwan, I have to confess how impressed I have been over the years by the Chinese Communist Party’s wholehearted embrace of high-speed rail and electric vehicles, and this at a time when my own democratic country has chosen a leader openly committed to doing everything in his power to put obstacles in the way of sustainable energy across the board — and democracy to boot. It really does make me wonder: “Are those of us right who hold that democracy is the right way to go?” Has Taiwan made the wrong choice? Many in China obviously
US President Donald Trump last week announced plans to impose reciprocal tariffs on eight countries. As Taiwan, a key hub for semiconductor manufacturing, is among them, the policy would significantly affect the country. In response, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) dispatched two officials to the US for negotiations, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC) board of directors convened its first-ever meeting in the US. Those developments highlight how the US’ unstable trade policies are posing a growing threat to Taiwan. Can the US truly gain an advantage in chip manufacturing by reversing trade liberalization? Is it realistic to
Last week, 24 Republican representatives in the US Congress proposed a resolution calling for US President Donald Trump’s administration to abandon the US’ “one China” policy, calling it outdated, counterproductive and not reflective of reality, and to restore official diplomatic relations with Taiwan, enter bilateral free-trade agreement negotiations and support its entry into international organizations. That is an exciting and inspiring development. To help the US government and other nations further understand that Taiwan is not a part of China, that those “one China” policies are contrary to the fact that the two countries across the Taiwan Strait are independent and
RSS