When 32-year-old Taiwanese student Peter Ng (
"Let me stand up like a Taiwanese!" shouted the wiry youngster, overwhelmed by husky police officers after failing in his attempted assassination.
The bang of the young man's gun was regarded as the first high-profile act of violent opposition against the ruling party in Taiwan since the regime of Chiang Kai-shek (蔣家政權), defeated by the Chinese Communists in China, retreated to Taiwan in 1949.
PHOTO: CHIANG YING-YING, TAIPEI TIMES
Three decades have passed since the mysterious would-be assassin first said those famous words.
Chiang's regime has long since faded along with the target of the assassination, his son, Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國), who passed away in 1987. Its demise culminated with the defeat of the KMT in last month's presidential election, when the DPP's Chen Shui-bian (
Ng remembers what it has taken to get here, though.
"I have no regrets for what I've done. The Taiwanese people would otherwise not have been given the chance to learn their real history until the huge political monster of the KMT had been beaten," Ng told the Taipei Times.
Ng said the KMT-controlled media had created a stereotype of students abroad advocating Taiwan independence as being "violent activists."
But he said it was time for people in Taiwan and the rest of the world to know the real Taiwan.
"I'm glad to see that Taiwan's complex political circumstances and its unsolved problems with China have been gradually revealed to the world during the second presidential campaign," said Ng, now a human-rights activist.
"I'm looking forward to more space for improving human rights, broadened by the new government, since it's an international issue with a strong consensus in the international community," said Ng.
At a conference yesterday, attended mostly by members of the World United Formosans for Independence (WUFI), which Ng belonged to at the time of the assassination attempt, participants said Taiwanese people should not be lulled into complacency under the new political circumstances.
"Although political power is transferring to the indigenous DPP, Taiwan's people are still lacking a spiritual culture, a commitment to this land," said Wang Chiou-sen (
Members argued that they have now completed their historic mission to elevate Taiwan to become a country with a distinct identity.
"Taiwanese people should not be so forgetful. The victory of the DPP should not be only attributed to efforts made by indigenous pioneers," said Wu Shu-min (吳樹民), vice chairman of the Wu San Lien Foundation for Taiwan Historical Materials (吳三連台灣史料基金會).
Radical Taiwanese students studying abroad established WUFI in 1966, in a bid to overthrow Chiang's regime and to advocate Taiwan's formal independence from China.
After the assassination bid on April 24, 1970, Ng pleaded guilty on charges of attempted murder. Ng's brother-in-law, T.T. Deh (
Ng and Deh were released by the US court in charge of the case on bail of US$100,000 and US$110,000 respectively, and began their decade-long experience in exile.
One day before Deh's conviction, he fled to Sweden and enjoyed one year of freedom after receiving political asylum. Later he was extradited back to the US and spent 22 months in jail.
Deh's return to Taiwan, without a visa, in the early 1990s landed him in jail for a year under Taiwan's National Security Law (國家安全法).
His case was only one among many other independence activists who were blacklisted and refused visas to return Taiwan by the KMT government.
Ng, who was believed the last on the blacklist, is appealing to a higher court to overturn his illegal entry charge from two years ago.
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