Taiwan’s handicap (中文 link at bottom)

It might be a while before the world realizes that a serious battle is being fought in Taiwan. But as the government becomes increasingly indifferent and repressive, that could change

Once again today, as I often have in the past, a young Taiwanese approached me and asked what could be done to help raise awareness about what is happening in Taiwan with international media like the BBC or CNN. Evidently, amid indications that the government has taken a more hardline and less accountable approach to politics, his real question was, Why doesn’t the world care about our fate?

As someone who has practiced journalism in Taiwan for nearly eight years, this is a question that I have often asked myself. My conclusion, after years of struggling to tell Taiwan’s story through major international media, is that Taiwan’s democratization during the 1980s was too successful. Now don’t get me wrong; by successful, I do not intend to create the impression that the island’s democracy is perfect — far from it: it is incomplete, unconsolidated, and torn by extraordinary pressures both from within and without.

What I mean by successful is that Taiwan’s democratization occurred without bloodshed, a truly rare instance in this part of the world. It also occurred at a time of tremendous optimism globally as the Soviet Union was crumbling and the forces of liberty seemed to be prevailing. In many ways, Taiwan was the perfect, logical example of the (since discredited) “end of history.” And with that, Taiwan became a victim of its own success. Taiwan was no longer authoritarian; people were no longer being disappeared or murdered by the state’s security apparatus, and furthermore its government had abandoned the delusional hopes of “re-taking” China.

Meanwhile, other countries within the region descended into chaos (Myanmar), threatened regional security with nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles (North Korea), faced domestic insurgencies (Philippines), descended into instability (Thailand), or emerged as regional powers while maintaining high levels of repression (China). In contrast, Taiwan was stable, successful, modern, liberal and thus easily forgettable, especially after the year 2000, when China’s “rise,” in addition to its abominable human rights record, became the story in the media, often at the expense of Taiwan. More and more, international media ignored Taiwan, pulling out their reporters and shifting them to China. Furthermore, as Beijing’s influence grew abroad, looking too closely at Taiwan became too inconvenient; showing concern about it risked damaging ties with China.

July 24 protest at the Legislative Yuan in Taipei

I discussed this with Sophie Richardson, director of the China program at Human Rights Watch, during a visit to Washington, D.C., last year. I had first gotten in touch with her a few years earlier, when I had noticed that HRW had removed Taiwan from its list of countries on its Web site. My initial reaction had been to attribute the removal to pressure from China, which often endeavors to efface Taiwan’s presence abroad. However, Richardson told me that the principal reason was that HRW (like the media) had finite resources and had to allocate those to where human rights violations were most serious and frequent, a situation that certainly didn’t apply to Taiwan.

I agreed then. I’m not sure I do now, and that is why I think that organizations like HRW should take a close look at what’s been going on in Taiwan in recent months.

Before skeptics dismiss my views because of the news organization that employs me, I should state that I have always sought to maintain a neutral stance on the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Unlike many of the strident mouthpieces in the pro-green camp media, I have endeavored to become acquainted with government officials as well as members of both the DPP and the KMT. I came out confident that the government had good people in its ranks (and bad ones, like elsewhere) and that the KMT was not the monolithic monster that its enemies would like us to believe.

One consequence of those efforts is that I have avoided demonizing the KMT or the Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) administration. I often have given them the benefit of the doubt, and never hesitated to criticize the DPP when criticism was due. For all that trouble, I was accused of “selling out” or of naively falling for the KMT’s lies, and even got into trouble with my employer.

Until recently, I think I was right in my assessment. But something has happened in recent months that warrants a reassessment. I’m not exactly sure whether it is the result of growing pressure from China, the 2016 presidential elections, or a desire on Ma’s part to accomplish certain things before he leaves office, but one thing is sure: we’re seeing an acceleration of state-sanctioned outrages against citizens, a growing reliance on police and the national security apparatus, and an increasingly restrictive environment for journalists.

Behind many of those infractions lies the issue of land, a precious commodity in Taiwan that I suspect is regarded by a small coterie of connected individuals as a potential gold mine if and when laws are amended that will allow Chinese to invest here. It’s been an ongoing process, and Chinese money is now allowed in major infrastructure projects like ports and airports, something that would have been inconceivable a few years ago. Unfortunately for all involved, the scarce commodity of land often has houses, businesses, farmland, and people on it, which makes seizing it evidently problematic. Or it should. By no means is the problem a recent phenomenon, or something that arose only after the KMT returned to power in 2008. The DPP faced similar issues, and on many occasions, how it handled the matter left a lot to be desired. However, in several instances — such as at the Huaguang Community (華光) in Taipei — it also chose not to act, and preferred to leave the problem to future administrations.

Victims of Dapu

But now, for some reason, the Ma government is showing signs of impatience. It, or investors and developers close to it, want the precious plots now, and the treatment reserved those who stand in the way has on several occasions led to what can only be characterized as human rights violations. By the end of September, Huaguang will be no more, to be replaced by a glitzy super mall for the super rich; in Dapu (大埔), Miaoli County, four homes were razed on July 18 under orders of County Commissioner Liu Cheng-hung (劉政鴻), an act that sparked outrage and a campaign of protests against Cabinet officials who broke promises and simply chose to look the other way. Dapu wasn’t Liu’s first act of terror, and it won’t be the last: the green light he has received from the government has now opened the door for further land grabs in his county as he attempts to create science parks and other mega projects. The fact that there simply isn’t enough demand or capital for those projects doesn’t seem to bother Liu or officials in Taipei. So what’s the alternative? I place my bets on investment from China.

Adding insult to injury, Liu has been unrepentant and unapologetic as people’s loves were destroyed by his acts. For its part, the Ma administration has responded to the public outrage with equal silence and repression of such magnitude as I had not seen since Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) chairman Chen Yunlin’s (陳雲林) visit to Taiwan in 2008. The only difference now is that no Chinese official needs to be present for the state to rely on its security apparatus to quiet dissent.

Unidentified enforcer

It is now known that the National Security Bureau has gotten involved as the protests snowball. During a protest on July 23, NSB officials were heard ordering police officers to take National Chengchi University professor Hsu Shih-jung (徐世榮) away, even though the academic had limited his actions to shouting slogans. On several occasions, people have been asked to show their I.D., told not to approach certain buildings (they did that to a legal expert from Academia Sinica yesterday as he approached the Howard Plaza, where Vice President Wu Den-yih [吳敦義] was attending a function), or have been taken away by police for reasons unknown. Moreover, a larger presence of plainclothes officers has been noticed, and those officers have repeatedly refused to give their name or reveal their organization to members of the public or to journalists, which has echoes of the authoritarian era. On several occasions, police have been unable or unwilling to state the articles of the law under which they took people away. And as this occurs, journalists have seen their access suffer, and often have been turned away or prevented from doing their work.

As those developments are causing serious harm to the image of the Ma government and becoming the subject of TV talk shows, we would imagine that the Presidential Office would seek to de-escalate, especially with local elections in 2014 and the presidential election in 2016. Instead, it escalated and chose an irrational path by rewarding the one person who has done most in recent months to hurt the KMT’s image, and who has become an object of hatred nationwide: during a party meeting on July 24, President Ma nominated Liu to the top of the list for the KMT Central Committee, as clear a sign as any that his government refuses to acknowledge — let alone address — public discontent with the whole Dapu affair. And Liu, who went to the intelligence school when he was young and went up the ranks locally as an official, now has greater ambitions following his retirement as county commissioner next year: he is rumored to be eyeing a shot as a legislator at large, and possibly even as a Cabinet official. 

Yes, the government has good people in its midst, including many career civil servants who were hired or rose under the previous administrations. But serving the Ma administration, they have all become silent, unwilling to challenge their masters and thereby complicit in the crimes that are now being perpetrated against Taiwanese.

I have worked for a government agency, one that, given its nature, tended to be rather unaccountable to the public. I know how easy it is for government officials (think Premier Jiang-Yi-huah [江宜樺]) to abandon their beliefs and humanity for the sake of a promotion, or to avoid being expelled. A few, like me, chose to leave when we could no longer countenance actions that were detrimental to democracy, but most stayed on and became part of the problem. The stakes were not extraordinarily high in Canada, and its democracy is resilient enough to survive. But Taiwan is in the crosshairs of what could possibly be the most successful authoritarian regime in all of history, by a regime that cannot wait to annihilate Taiwan’s democracy. With the return of the pro-unification gangster Chang An-le (張安樂) and the increasingly repressive and unaccountable behavior of the Ma administration, I find it difficult to believe that what we’re experiencing doesn’t have a Chinese component to it. The public is agitating, but eventually it will take government officials who are courageous enough to fight their own institutions for this country to survive as a liberal democracy.

Artists come out in support

Activists, students, academics, artists and members of the public are rising and shouting their anger; let’s hope some noble souls sitting in the ministries nearby hear their cries and act accordingly. It might be a while yet before the rest of the world realizes that a serious battle is being fought in Taiwan at the moment. (All photos by the author)

NEW! A Chinese version of this article is available here.

Real academics will fight for the nation

Real academics, those with integrity, know they have a responsibility to society to act as role models for the future leaders and citizens of this country

For a government that supposedly admires Confucian values, President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration has lately been doing an abominable job in its treatment of the few academics left in Taiwan who have not sold their souls to mercantilism or to China.

There are worrying signs that the government, led by Ma, who was recently “re-elected” as Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman in a “democratic” process that managed to be both farcical and illusory, is tightening the screws on dissent, while growing ever more distant from the public. In recent months, the process of theft and destruction of people’s property by the authorities has accelerated, from the outrage of Dapu Borough (大埔), Miaoli County, last week, to the Huaguang Community (華光) earlier this year, where more rounds of destruction are planned next month. No matter what victims and their supporters did, the government ignored their pleas and proceeded with grabbing whatever it wanted.

My unsigned editorial, published today in the Taipei Times, continues here. (Photo by the author)

‘Today Dapu, tomorrow the government’ (中文 link at bottom)

As more protests erupt over the demolitions, disturbing trends in law enforcement call for close scrutiny

Eight years ago when I relocated to Taiwan, I never thought that one day, working as a journalist, I would be covering actions by people in this young democracy that, more and more, have the characteristics of guerrilla warfare. No, bombs are not going off and the military is not being attacked by small groups of men bearing assault rifles. But as people become disillusioned with an increasingly predatory government and a legislative and judicial system that cannot be counted on to ensure justice and fairness in this land, Taiwanese are standing up — and the outrage at Dapu (大埔) in Miaoli County last week appears to have lit a fire.

Peng Hsiu-chun, victim

Ever since people’s homes were torn down on the orders of the bandit Miaoli County Commissioner last Thursday, activists — a mix of students, artists, academics and NGO members — have embarked on a series of flash protests targeting senior government officials for their indifference to suffering, possible complicity in the act, and years of lies. Almost everywhere they go, senior officials are met with protests, and the leaders of the campaign have promised that those actions will not cease until justice has been met. At the weekend, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) headquarters, abuzz with President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) ridiculous “re-election” bid for chairmanship of the party, was egged by activists, and a number of his campaign activities encountered small but pointed protests.

The tactic seems to be working: on Monday, after being interrupted by protests during an event promoting the alleged virtues of the cross-strait trade agreement to be signed next week, Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) complained to the press that his efforts to talk about the pact had been “hijacked” by the protesters, who must feel terrible for making the premier uncomfortable.

Press conference on Ketagalan

The protests continued this morning with a press conference on Ketagalan Boulevard, a few hundred meters away from the Presidential Office and a sizeable turnout of police officers in riot gear and rolls of barbed wire. During the event, the Taiwan Rural Front and allied organizations issued an ultimatum against the government, warning it that if by August 18 — exactly one month after the demolitions — the government has not apologized for the demolitions and returned the land stolen from its owners (ostensibly to make way for a science park, though their properties were located on the peripheries), there would be hell to pay.

Remains of lives

As Taiwan Rural Front spokeswoman Frida Tsai (蔡培慧) and a number of academics railed against the government, Peng Hsiu-chun (彭秀春), a soft-spoken housewife and owner of one of the properties torn down last week, displayed the remains of family items — clothing, wedding photos, the bowl that she had used for the past decade — that were buried under the rubble of their home and subsequently dumped in a field.

After the press conference wrapped up, activists and journalists jumped into cabs and headed for the Ministry of Health and Welfare, where President Ma and Premier Jiang were attending an unveiling ceremony. Before I joined them, I tool a long look behind the line of police officers at the area in front of the Presidential Office, where I had covered the protest last Thursday, and where a senior police officer pushed me and, as I have related already, told me to leave because this was not my country.

Police awaits

As it turns out, after the protest had ended on July 18, something else happened that raises serious questions about the state of affairs in Taiwan. Unfortunately it occurred after I had left to go cover another unrelated protest, but thankfully it was caught on film and posted on the Internet. Based on the footage, police started asking anyone who was still in the area to show their I.D., and those who refused were immediately taken away and held for as many as three hours. Those acts were purportedly made legal through the creation of a “special district branch” which we’ve never heard of. Combined with the growing number of plainclothes and other individuals bearing no uniform or insignia used by law enforcement during protests (including today), such developments should give us pause.

Lin Fei-fan is taken away

The voluble cab driver took us to our destination on Tacheng St near Taipei Main Station, where several police officers were cordoning of the area. Little by little, as the protesters converged on the Ministry of Health and Welfare, clashes erupted, and once again police zeroed in on well-known protesters, including Lin Fei-fan (林飛帆), Chen Wei-ting (陳為廷) and Hung Chung-yen (洪崇晏), and prevented them from going any further. Clashes erupted almost simultaneously in various areas, often pitting a few men against large groups of police officers, or a pair of female officers against a single female demonstrator.

I then heard a loud scream and ran across the street, where I came upon Hung, blood dripping from a large gap at the back of his head. For a second, I feared that the tissue paper that was falling off the back of his head was actually brain matter. Hung had fallen during an altercation with police and knocked his head on the pavement. He remained defiant, stood up and holding a banner, but he was eventually taken to hospital, where he received three stitches under the guard of police officer, who then tried to take him to the police station, but were prevented doing so by friends of Hung who accompanied him at the hospital.

Hung, injured, defiant

Word is now going round that the authorities have identified Hung as a “security threat,” with conflicting reports mentioning possible orders from the National Security Bureau (NSB) or the National Security Council. Upon hearing this, I could not help think of the NSB’s inability to properly defend the country against Communist infiltration, or the many instances where visiting Chinese officials got away with molesting or raping young female staff at hotels. And yet Hung, a student of philosophy at NTU, is a threat to national security? Update: It’s confirmed, the NSB is involved.

I snapped more pictures of clashes and protesters chanting the slogan”[You] tear down houses in Dapu today; [we] tear down the government tomorrow,” and then followed a small group of activists as they tried to come in from another direction. Immediately, more clashes occurred, with a goon-like fridge of a man in a green T-shirt, but otherwise no identification, helping police with dragging protesters away.

Professor Hsu is dragged away and arrested

Then I came upon Hsu Shih-jung (徐世榮), a gentle professor of land economics at National Chengchi University (NCCU), as a group of police officers dragged him away across the street. Hsu has taken up the cause of the victims of Dapu and has actively sought justice for them, participating on protests and visiting Dapu on several occasions. Police claimed that Hsu had violated the Public Safety Act (公共危險罪) and arrested him. According to the professor and several witnesses, his only crime was to shout the same slogan that activists had been shouting all morning. As police were taking him away, young activists surrounded them, screaming “excessive police force!” Pictures that later emerged showed serious bruising on Professor Hsu’s armpits. Activists were able to track down the police officer who’d ordered Hsu’s arrest, who refused to identify himself or talk to them, saying “the investigation is supposed to be private,” whatever that means. There is something about the pictures that I took of Professor Hsu that I find … haunting. Hsu was later released for “lack of evidence.”

Chen Wei-ting speaks up

Ma and Jiang left and the protests ended, the police officers melting like ice cream on this extremely hot July morning. Most went into the shade, where oddly enough they struck conversations with some of the protesters. I sat down next to Lin Fei-fan, realizing I’d not had water for a while and feeling dizzy. The cops, seeing a long foreigner sweating like a pig, were amused. The atmosphere was rather out of place, coming as it did minutes after the clashes and the anger. Many cops said they were just doing their job, and a good number of them didn’t really seem to know what the groups were protesting against. A few said that if it’d been their day off, they’d have joined the protest — in jest, I’m sure. (All pictures by the author)

NEW! Chinese version available here.

Ex-premier Hau calls for ‘Chinese-style’ democracy, unification

Hau Pei-tsun speaks in Hong Kong

Under his proposed system, only a limited number of political parties would be allowed to field candidates 

Beijing must work with Taiwan toward “reunification” through a new mechanism of “Chinese-style” democracy that would limit the political arena to only a few political parties, former premier Hau Pei-tsun (郝柏村) has said.

Hau, who delivered a keynote speech at the City University of Hong Kong on Friday, said that only when China abandons the threat of force against Taiwan and the two sides embrace “Chinese-style” democracy will the “Chinese dream” be accomplished, the South China Morning Post reported on Sunday.

My article, published today in the Taipei Times, continues here.

Desperate, the government turns to the courts and loses all moral standing (中文 link at bottom)

More and more, the Ma government is using lawsuits and the law in an attempt to deter and discredit young activists

I first met Wang Yun-hsiang (王雲祥) during a large protest against the destruction of houses in Taipei’s Huaguang Community (華光) in April this year. In fact, I didn’t even know his name when I took a photograph of the young man, the red letters on his T-shirt reading “street fight,” as he was being whisked away by police officers. On that day, the Taipei City government had moved in and bulldozed a number of houses and commercial establishments, claiming the residents had lived there illegally. From the rubble of Huaguang, city officials promised that a sparkling new complex for the rich would sprout, while the few human remnants were scattered to the winds, the tight knots of a community, formed over decades, severed forever.

Wang is taken away at Huaguang

As he was escorted right past me, where I stood on the tracks of an excavator, snapping pictures, Wang looked straight ahead, a light of defiance in his eyes that, when I met him again weeks, months later, had not died out. The young man was arrested that day, and his summons to court was last week. According to court documents, Wang was found guilty of obstructing the work of police officers in their line of duty. Using video footage, he contends that all he did that day was to try to mediate between another protester and police officers who were taking him away.

Was Wang, like others, involved in physical clashes with the hundreds of police officers who had been deployed to protect construction — strike that, demolition — workers as they perpetrated state-sanctioned violence against the poor, the elderly, and the infirm? Maybe. Since I was behind the police lines, one of the few individuals allowed in, thanks to my press credentials, I did not directly witness what happened in the melee. But on that fateful day, Wang and hundreds of others were fighting for their ideals, and for a just resolution to the years-long conflict.

The court sentenced Wang to 100 hours of community service so that he could “improve his behavior” and become a “better citizen.”

When I first heard of the ruling, my first reaction was to ask, But hasn’t Wang already done a lot more than 100 hours of community service, standing on the side of the weak and vulnerable against the vultures bearing the masks of “modernity” and “development”? Didn’t any of his actions, not only at Huaguang, but also in Yuanli (苑裡) and Dapu (大埔), both in Miaoli County, where he and others were roughed up, intimidated, and threatened by police and thugs as they once again attempted to erect a line against injustice, constitute time served? And above all, how could a judicial system presume to make Wang into a “better citizen” through community service when his very actions were inspired and motivated by the noblest of motives, when those at fault were not the protesters and the victims, but the government itself, a force that is evidently in cahoots with land developers and that has grown increasingly disconnected from the needs and fears of its citizens?

A cop pushes Wang away

Wang took the hit, and the very next day, undeterred, he was at it again, this time participating in a protest in front of the Presidential Office just as the bulldozers were moving in in Dapu. No sooner had he pointed his nose in front of the seat of power, where hundreds had gathered, than the police pushed him back, clear evidence that he was being singled out.

What is special about this otherwise ordinary, skinny young man is that he doesn’t fit the stereotype with which the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have become comfortable over the years. For Wang, who works in the visual arts sector, is of second-generation “mainlander” stock, which means absolutely nothing for a generation that was born here in Taiwan and identifies with the land (Wang even speaks Taiwanese). But for conservative forces, activists like him are problematic, as they cannot be placed in the typical category of ethnic conflict pitting “mainlander” against “Taiwanese.”

The CCP, and in many ways the KMT as well, would like nothing more than for Taiwan to remain divided along the old “ethnic” lines, but with Wang and several others his age, such divisions, both in terms of one’s “ethnicity” and voting preferences, are disappearing fast. More and more, and as society mobilizes against a series of outrages orchestrated or condoned by the government, Taiwan’s ethnic groups are fighting alongside one another, and oftentimes are doing so in cooperation with, or in the name of, individuals who are evidently of different “ethnic” background or political views. Only in today’s Taiwan could young Taiwanese, leaders like Lin Fei-fan (林飛帆) from Tainan, get themselves into trouble with the authorities for the sake of saving a house inhabited by an elderly KMT soldier who continues to revere Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), and whose memorabilia of the late dictator went down with the house.

It is no surprise that the authorities, faced with rising, organized, and heterogeneous activism, would seek to make examples of young men like Wang, or Chen Wei-ting (陳為廷), a Hakka from Miaoli who often has been targeted by law enforcement and pro-China media conglomerates (Chen was taken away by police at the weekend for throwing paint at the house of Miaoli County Commissioner’s house to protest the Dapu demolitions). In doing so, the government has increasingly relied on the courts, presumably hoping that fines, sentences, and community service would suffice to dissuade youth from continuing their opposition.

Kuo clashes with police on July 18

Wang and Chen are not alone. One day after the houses were demolished in Dapu, sparking nationwide outrage among citizens, academics, journalists, documentary filmmakers, and the artistic community, Kuo Guan-jun (郭冠均), another young activist, was arrested by police as he participated in one of the many flash protests that were launched that day targeting senior Cabinet officials. The next day, Kuo appeared in court, where he was accused of “endangering public safety” during a campaign event for President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九). Images of the court schedule posted on the Internet showed the bails that had been set for a variety of people who were set to appear before him that day. The offenses were for drunk driving, theft and so on, and the bails ranged from NT$5,000 to NT$10,000. For some reason, Kuo’s was set at NT$30,000, which the Taiwan Rural Front, an NGO supporting land and farmers’ rights, eventually paid for.

If found guilty, Kuo could be sentenced to a maximum of five years’ imprisonment. Guo never even came close to President Ma.

Later the same day, activists Wang Chung-ming (王鐘銘) and Wu Hsueh-chan (吳學展) were detained and charged with violations of the Social Order Maintenance Act (社會秩序維護法) during an egg-throwing protest in front of the KMT headquarters building in Taipei.

That same weekend, during another campaign event for Ma, a mother of three, with no history of involvement in political issues, brought her three-year-old child to see Ma, and pretending to be a supporter, she was able to get close enough to him to shout: “Today it was Dapu, tomorrow it will be the government!” before a shaken president was whisked away by his security detail. Police then asked the woman to show them her I.D. card, a request that she complied with, even though law enforcement had no right to ask a citizen to provide such documents simply for having spoken her mind in public.

Chen Wei-ting

Increasingly, as the embattled government loses its footing, it will resort to heavy — in fact disproportionate — punishments against “unruly” youth that will no longer stand by as the government fails to abide by its contract with a people that brought it to power via democratic means. This will come in the form of jail sentences, fines, or lawsuits, all of which has already started to happen. In the process, the Ma administration will more and more resemble the governments of Singapore, which has perfected the art of using lawsuits to cow and discredit anyone who dares to oppose its soft authoritarianism, and that of China, which distorts the legal system to maintain its tight grip on the public.

The government, banking on so-called Confucian values that it is actively seeking to revive, is trying to make criminals out of young, idealistic individuals who are fully cognizant of the values upon which this nation was built. It accuses them of being “troublemakers,” or “professional protesters” whose actions are hurting the country’s image. But there is no doubt in the public’s mind that the activists, whose ranks are growing, are on the side of the angels, selflessly enduring injury, fatigue, ridicule and the threat of the courts in their battle to prove that two plus two isn’t five, as our increasingly Orwellian government claims, but indeed four. (All photos by the author)

NEW! A Chinese-language (中文) version of this article can be read here.

With protesters at MND headquarters, calling for justice in the Hung Chung-chiu case

Taiwanese support the military and genuinely regard it as a tool to defend their nation. But they want transparency and accountability

I was somewhat divided on Saturday morning as I headed over to the Ministry of National Defense headquarters in Taipei to attend a mass rally calling for justice in the recent death of 23-year-old corporal Hung Chung-chiu (洪仲丘) and other mysterious deaths over the years.

Having spent several years covering the Taiwanese military for a local newspaper and specialized publications such as Jane’s Defence Weekly, I have struck many friendships in the armed forces, and have great admiration for several members of the force. Conversely, I also believe that MND owes it to its soldiers to address systemic issues of corruption and cover-ups in its ranks, especially at a time when the military is struggling to attract enough recruits to implement an all-volunteer service by 2015. As a strong proponent of Taiwan’s right to self-defense, I contend that it is essential that cases of criminal neglect and corruption be brought to light and dealt with accordingly to avoid such incidents breaking troop morale, and with that, the armed forces’ back.

Protesters call for justice

So I went, joining the estimated 15,000 to 30,000 people — the majority of them wearing white, as requested by the organizers — who encircled the headquarters building. People carried various placards and banners, with messages such as “Train the body, not become a body” and “We can handle the truth,” in reference to the Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson movie A Few Good Men. The parents of other young soldiers who have died in recent years under suspicious circumstances, and whose efforts to shed light on the tragedies had until now been met with silence and indifference by the authorities, were also present, showing pictures, military badges — and most disturbingly — photographs of the autopsies.

Tsai and his father

I briefly spoke with a young man surnamed Tsai (蔡) and his father, who became famous a few months ago when Tsai, who was then doing his compulsory service, made a scene at Taipei Main Station by refusing to go back to his base, which was caught on film and spread over the Internet. I myself had been too quick to judge Tsai at the time, believing that he was simply too soft for the military, or too selfish to sacrifice some of his time for the sake of his country. After what Tsai and his father told me, and after the terrible fate that befell Hung, I have altered my views on the matter. As it turns out, the young Tsai had grown up in the U.S. and didn’t speak Mandarin, a shortcoming that, he claimed, had led to serious physical abuse. “If my father hadn’t pulled me out of the military, I’d be one of them today,” he told me, jutting his chin towards placards with pictures of dead soldiers next to us.

Several protesters, young men who obviously had already undergone their military service, participated in a number of skits during the protest, parading to army songs with slightly altered lyrics and being “forced” to do push-ups while being abused by mock superiors. In the morning heat, the sun blazing on our heads, they repeatedly made it a point to sing the traditional song reminding soldiers to drink water, and then hydrated themselves — a powerful symbol, given that Hung had died not of “heat stroke,” as the media have referred to it, but rather of disseminated intra-vascular coagulation, or DIC, a much more serious condition.

Remember to drink!

In layman’s terms, DIC means that Hung, his body temperature having risen to 44 degrees Celsius, literally cooked internally (the autopsy pictures attest to the horror of his death). While in confinement, and for what now looks like his efforts to expose corruption among his superiors, Hung was forced to participate in various physical exercises under severe heat and was not given a drop of water to re-hydrate himself. As little as 300cc of water would have saved his life, but that was denied him, and on July 4, after falling in a coma and being taken to hospital, he died.

Throughout the event, organizers kept reminding the protesters to remain peaceful, and that call, despite the palpable anger among young men, women, and parents present, was respected. Otherwise, given the size of the crowd, the protesters would have made short shrift of the police and MP deployed around the MND building.

What soon became evident, both from the speeches and the behavior of the crowd, was that the protest wasn’t against the military, a very important distinction. It was, instead, a loud call for justice and the fair treatment of soldiers in the military, and for MND to fix the problems that had led to Hung’s death and that of others before him. The mood in fact clearly underscored the participants’ commitment to defending the nation. The composition of the crowd, moreover, left no doubt that this country has several young men and women who are willing to fight, and die, defending their country, despite what critics of the armed forces, and of Taiwan’s youth, often claim. It was impossible not to be moved when several thousands of Taiwanese started chanting guo fang bu jia you! (國防部加油!), or, “Go! Go! Ministry of National Defense!”

Andrew Yang addresses the crowd

Then a nervous-looking Deputy Minister of National Defense Andrew Yang (楊念祖), whom I have met on several occasions over the years, and who tends to make a lot more sense than many people in his ministry, climbed onto the lead protest vehicle and briefly addressed the crowd, under the close guard of two police officers holding round shields. Revealingly, and somewhat missed in media reports, Yang asked the public to give the ministry a chance to correct its mistakes and to prove that it can do better in the future. Yes, the deputy minister had publicly admitted that MND had committed mistakes in its handling of the Hung case, words that went well beyond what others in his ministry, and within the Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) administration, had said to date. He then accepted the list of demands and manifesto from Citizen 1985, the organizer of the protest, and bowed to the crowd in apology, to thundering applause and very limited booing.

Yang did — and probably meant — well, though there are doubts as to his ability to force change within the armed forces. Despite his appointment, which was supported by former National Security Council secretary-general Su Chi (蘇起), a trusted Ma aide, Yang remains a policy man and has often been sidelined within his own ministry.

Parents seeking justice

It should also be said that unlike what critics were saying the following day, Yang never made any promises; he only accepted the manifesto and the demands handed him on Saturday. The deputy minister never vowed that an independent third party would be allowed to conduct an investigation into Hung’s case, and as such, he cannot be accused of breaking his promise when MND late on Saturday night issued a communiqué in which it reaffirmed its determination to keep the matter in the hands of military prosecutors (yes, this is problematic, albeit not unusual for military organizations the world over).

An old hero turns up

As many more people had turned up for the protest (organizers had expected 6,000), a planned march to the Legislative Yuan had to be cancelled. The numbers were a clear indication that the matter is one that they — people in the armed forces, recent recruits, soon-to-be recruits, potential ones, and parents — take very seriously. The ball is now it the MND and Ma administration’s camp. (All photos by the author.)

Things coming apart, the Dapu outrage as a catalyst? [UPDATED]

Thuggish local officials, an unresponsive central government and the exploitation of the weak are creating an unstable brew of anger across Taiwan 

We all knew it was going to happen eventually, that efforts over three years by residents and their supporters, lawyers, journalists and academics to prevent a local government thug from destroying their homes would likely fail, but when the outrage was actually perpetrated on Thursday, the cold, hard reality hit home. On that day, as hundreds of people protested in front of the Presidential Office, the bulldozers rolled in and razed people’s homes in Dapu (大埔), Miaoli County, pulverizing wood, concrete, dreams, lives lived, memories — and faith in people’s ability to rectify government abuse through legal and peaceful processes.

More and more, Taiwanese are realizing that harsher, perhaps more extreme measures will be needed to unhinge a government that makes a travesty of democracy and rule of law while enriching itself and its cronies at the expense of ordinary citizens.

Protesters in front of the Presidential Office

I observed the latest round of protests on Ketagalan Boulevard against what can only be described as the criminal behavior of Miaoli County Commissioner Liu Cheng-hung (劉政鴻). The emotions, supercharged with the knowledge of what was happening at the same time down in Dapu, were palpable, and as expected, after a few speeches by activists and academics, clashes erupted, with waves of people rushing towards the Presidential Office, while rows of police officers pushed back with their shields. In the melee, Peng Hsiu-chun (彭秀春), whose house was among those being demolished, turned up, her face strained by emotions, sadness, and despair. “My home! They are destroying my home!” she said of an act that her husband, Chang Sen-wen (張森文), his mental state obliterated by recent developments, has to this day been kept secret from him. As the clashes continued, Peng was pushed by a police shield and collapsed to the ground, where she lost consciousness. Medics were sent to the scene, where they stabilized her neck, put her on a gurney, and spirited her away in an ambulance, as the angry crowd looked on.

Mrs Peng is taken away

Two large police buses then turned up, and the order was given for police to take the protesters away. The cops were also ordered to create a ring around the protesters and to keep journalists at bay. I circled round the scene as activists were forcefully shoved into the buses, frustrated at my inability to take good pictures of the action — a feeling that was shared among most photographers on the scene, who loudly voiced their complaints.

Then, just as one bus, its hull pregnant with dozens of protesters, was about to take off, I attempted to take one last picture of it (a female protester had managed to lodge herself against the front window) when a police officer used his shield to shove me away. He pushed so hard that my feet left the ground momentarily, but I managed to remain in position to take the shot. He approached me again and told me to bug off. “I’m a reporter,” I replied. “I’m doing my job.” It had the opposite effect. He turned on me and screamed, in English: “This is not your country! This is China, you have no business here!”

Activists are taken away

Now, to be fair, I cannot say with 100% certitude that he said China, as his accent was rather thick and there was a lot of noise, but immediately after this, a Taiwanese protester joined us and bellowed: “This is not China, this is Taiwan!” Whereupon the cop repeated his insult, this time making sure that this was not my country, that this was Taiwan. Correction notwithstanding, I had just been told by a police officer that foreign reporters had no business covering such developments, and as readers can very well imagine, this writer, who regards his work as a responsibility, did not appreciate his views at all. Since he’d chosen to speak English to me, I summoned the Bard and responded in such a voice that must have been heard all the way inside the Presidential Office. “I’m doing my work,” I hollered, following him around and repeating myself, my words punctuated by a few unprintable expletives. A senior — and rather friendlier — officer from the CID then intervened and quieted things down. I repeated to him what the cop had said to me, and the CID officer admitted that the junior cop shouldn’t have said that. “But you were standing in front of that bus,” he said. Fair enough, I replied, and we parted amicably, though deep inside I knew that journalists and photographers did what I did all the time. I thanked him and patted him on the shoulder (always keep allies in the ranks). Soon afterwards, a Taiwanese protester came over and nodded in the direction of a plainclothes police officer standing nearby. “Be careful, he’s watching you,” he murmured. Update: I had initially referred to the cop as being young, but I ran into him again at the protest in front of MND on Saturday morning, and realized that he is rather senior, with two lines and three stars. In other words, he really should have known better.

More protesters were shoved into a bus, and once again it was impossible for journalists to get close enough to the action. One, who had briefly succeeded in breaking through the line, was soon expelled, whereupon he launched himself into a series of colorful expletives.

The protest, which had lasted about one hour, wrapped up, and we all dispersed. Activists on the bus say they weren’t told where they were being taken, and decided to call the authorities to inform them that they had been kidnapped. Police eventually dropped them off near Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall.

By then, the homes in Dapu were no more. Under Liu’s orders, crew had moved in even before the residents could take all their personal belongings out. In fact, the residents were not even given enough time to pray to the land god before the workers demolished their homes, which according to Taiwanese beliefs will bring bad luck, as if they didn’t have enough of that already. Workers took out fridges and TV sets, but almost everything else — clothes, jewelry, money, photo albums — went down with the buildings, only to be dumped into a field nearby. Appearing on a talk show on FTV the following night, Peng, a sweet, humble woman who never asked to be forced onto the national scene, tearfully showed some of her clothes, covered in mud, ruined. She also displayed what was left of her wedding photo albums. Her wedding ring was somewhere in that field, under piles of debris, which continued to accumulate as city workers kept dumping stuff there. Images of their son sifting through the rubble, looking for their belongings, were heartbreaking. Update: On Saturday at noon, an order was issued for police to surround the dumping ground. It now seems that the Chang's personal belongings are being held hostage by the county government. Might it be because of the series of absolutely heart-rending pictures we have seem coming out of that field since last night, as the family and friends look for their cherished items? Or a personal vendetta to make the family suffer for daring to oppose Liu?

As academics had said at the protest and are now saying on talk shows, citizens had used all legal and peaceful means over three years, all means of suasion, had been given promises by then premier and now Vice President Wu Den-yih (吳敦義), only for the crime to be perpetrated anyway. The inaction of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which has contented itself with playing the role of opposition party, and the silence of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators, has also left activists disillusioned and desperate. It is no wonder that we are increasingly hearing calls for revolution, disobedience, guerrilla tactics, and more direct action. Or warnings to Liu that he will be hounded wherever he goes, that he should have police parked in front of his house 24 hours a day. The commissioner and his backers in Taipei have pushed people to the limit of their patience, and made it evident that traditional approaches, based on rule of law and reasoning, are failing — over Dapu, and over many other issues.

In front of KMT headquarters

So on Thursday night, Yang Ju-man (楊儒門), better known as the “Rice Bomber,” re-emerged and joined the cause by lobbing a paint bomb at the Presidential Office. The following morning, student activist Chen Wei-ting (陳為廷), better known for his role as a leader of the anti-media monopolization movement, visited one of Liu’s five homes in Miaoli (Chen himself is from there) and threw paint at it, before he was overpowered by police and taken away. Later that day, protesters gathered in front of the KMT headquarters building in Taipei, carrying pictures of old KMT revolutionaries and holding a press conference before throwing eggs at the building, prompting brief clashes with police and more muscular pain for this writer, who at one point was sandwiched between a concrete wall and a bulky police officer who was fighting off a protester. Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) campaign office (he’s running against only himself for the KMT chairmanship on Saturday in what is expected to be a very close race) was also heavily egged, and pig feces were thrown while he was on a visit on Chiayi. For his part, Wu was heckled by protesters during an event in Taipei. More and more, people from the inside are providing activists with the itineraries of government officials, which includes the Central News Agency (CNA) list of all government activities, known as the daily guo nei. CNA sends the list to news organizations every night at about 9:30.

Eggs fly

Just before the eggs started flying at the center of KMT power, Li An-cih, one of the activists who spoke during the press conference, quoted words by Japanese novelist Murakami Haruki which he had issued upon receiving the Jerusalem Prize for the Freedom of the Individual in Society in 2009:

"Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg."

Loud and clear

It takes a lot to push Taiwanese to take non-peaceful measures, but from everything that has happened in recent months, and with the crime of Dapu perhaps serving as a catalyst, I believe we may soon cross a line where more direct — perhaps even violent — action will be taken. It’s always easy to regard individuals like the Rice Bomber as extremists, terrorists even, but how can we not agree with their tactics when years of rational efforts, abiding by legal and democratic rules, are simply ignored by those in power, by crooks who undo the very fabric of Taiwan’s democracy in the process of seizing valuable land to fatten their bank accounts, perhaps in expectation of the day when Taiwan will relax its regulations on Chinese purchase of land here?

Things might get ugly, and the government will only have itself to blame for what happens next. (All pictures by the author.)

Russia Delays India’s 5th-Gen. Fighter Program

A Russian T-50 prototype during a test

More delays for the Indian Air Force's perspective multi-role fighter

According to news reports this week, the Indian Air Force (IAF) might have to wait longer before it can induct its first fifth-generation fighter aircraft (FGFA) after Russia, with which it is co-producing the platform, imposed delays and unexpectedly hiked development costs.

Despite the U.S. encouraging India to join the fifth-generation F-35 Joint Strike Fighter consortium, New Delhi committed itself to the Sukhoi/ Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) FGFA variant of the Sukhoi PAK FA PMF T-50, also known as the “perspective multi-role fighter.” The program was initiated during a visit to New Delhi by then Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in December 2010.

My article, published today in The Diplomat, continues here.

A visit to the White Wolf’s Unionist Party campaign office

Ex-gangster Chang An-le is back in Taiwan and he has political ambitions, a campaign office, and a political tract 

Ever since his return to Taiwan in late June, Chang An-le (張安樂), the wanted fugitive and former leader of the Bamboo Union triad, has endeavored to remind everybody in Taiwan that he’s written a booklet promoting the “peaceful re-unification” of Taiwan and China.

Even when a SWAT team picked him up after he exited the airplane from Shanghai, the handcuffed Chang, smiling, succeeded in displaying his political tract, for all to see. And no sooner had he been released on bail the same day than the “White Wolf” (白狼), as he is called in the underworld, started appearing on TV talk shows desperate for ratings, where, besides promoting his political views and showing just out of touch with Taiwan’s political scene he has become after an absence of 17 years, he also made sure to flash the booklet. 

The 48-page booklet

After seeing “Peaceful Unification and One County” (和平統一、一國兩制) so many times, I decided that I needed to obtain a copy for myself, to see what I could learn about his plans for the future of China and Taiwan, especially now that the party he created while he was exiled in China has indicated its intention to field candidates in next year’s local elections, and perhaps even in the 2016 presidential election. I needed to see what Chang, who served 10 years in jail in the U.S. for drug trafficking, and who played a role in the assassination in 1984 of the journalist Henry Liu in California, had to say about his plans for unification.

Another reason why I wanted to read the literature stemmed from the high likelihood that the CCP’s United Front efforts to solve the Taiwan Problem involve using criminal organizations. With Chang a free man since his return to Taiwan (no date appears to have been set for his trial), and given his closeness with some political figures in China and Taiwan, I’ve been curious to find out if he might not be part of that campaign. Though it is unable to verify his sources, the exiled Chinese writer Yuan Hongbing (袁紅冰) claims in his book The Taiwan Crisis to have come upon information that confirms a role for organized crime.

Luckily for me, the Unionist Party’s (中華統一促進黨) office is located in my neighborhood, on Minsheng E Rd, section 3. I walked there, not knowing what to expect once I got there, but vividly remembering the assortment of characters that had gathered by the hundreds on that Saturday to celebrate his return to Taiwan.

I reached the nondescript building and scanned the various company signs displayed on thin metal sheeting on the wall of the lobby. Sure enough, the party was still there. Fourth floor. I went up the cramped elevator, various scenarios — some rather violent, albeit grandly newsworthy — playing through my head. After all, it was likely that I was the very first foreigner ever to visit their party headquarters, and based on my previous experiences with pro-unification figures in Taiwan, they tended to have a bit of a xenophobic streak.

A woman passed by me, a strange expression on her face, as I walked towards the closed glass front door, the large yellow-and-blue sign of two hands clasped in the ostensibly warmth of the people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, telling me that I had reached my destination. I pressed the ringer, not knowing whether there would be anyone there. It was 11:45 in the morning, but then again, the UP isn’t exactly the KMT or the DPP. In fact, a lot of people don’t even know it exists. There was no answer, but being 6’2” tall, I was able to look in through the small top section of the door that hadn’t been smoked. A man, somewhere in his sixties, was seated at a desk at the far corner of the room, speaking on the phone. No lovely receptionist for you at the UP — at least not yet.

I pushed the door, and it opened. After waiting for about a minute, the man concluded his call and came over, greeting me in Mandarin. I replied that I was a journalist and was wondering whether they had copies of the booklet that Mr. Chang had been promoting since his return to Taiwan. “Of course, of course,” he said, ushering me into a conference room on my left, and leaving me there alone as he went back to his desk.

There were two features to the otherwise empty room: a large PRC flag, the red and yellow contrasting sharply with the egg-white walls, and a large collection of photos — hundreds of them — featuring Chang and the various places he’d visited in China, as well as the many people of influence within the CCP that he had brushed elbows with over the years. This was one of those moments when I terribly regretted not bringing my camera; but then again, I’m not sure how the staff would have reacted if I’d showed up with my large Nikon and 300mm lens, let alone if I’d started snapping pictures. You’ll have to take my word for it: while in China, Chang didn’t live the life of a fugitive, and some of the people he met were pretty high up.

My host promptly returned, holding a small stack of said booklets, though the version he had was of the diminutive kind, much smaller than the 8.5 x 11 original Chang had flashed on TV. He then escorted me towards another door at the far end of the conference room, which gave into another room. In there, another man was seated at a desk — larger, of finer wood, therefore more important, I figured — busily sucking on a cigarette. (For the life of me, I cannot remember if there was another person in the room, though I have the vague impression that there might have been a second man). My first instinct was to remind him that under Taipei City regulations, it is illegal to smoke inside commercial buildings, but I thought better of it. The man, short, slightly overweight, stained teeth, in his early fifties, looked more the kind that had given Chang a bad reputation in the 1980s — in other words, more like a gangster — than the political staffer that one expects to encounter in a party headquarters.

He stood up from behind his desk, and I greeted him, again repeating that I was a journalist and was hoping to get some literature. “How many do you want?” he asked. “Uh, two, would that be all right?” “Have five — six,” he said. They gave me five, which the man in his sixties placed in a yellow envelope, for convenience or to hide the contents, I wasn’t sure.

Cartoons for unification

They stood there and seemed to be waiting for me to ask them questions. I told them that all I wanted for the time being was a copy of their booklet. They escorted me out, the short man smiling and thanking me profusely, his left hand cupping his right fist and shaking up and down, a symbol of gratitude in this part of the world. “You wouldn’t happen to have an English version?” I asked jokingly. “Sorry, only Chinese. You understand Chinese, right?” “Yes,” I said as I made for the door. We said goodbye, and I left.

They were polite — welcoming, in fact. Interestingly, they never asked me which media organization I worked for, nor did they ask for a business card. Maybe they need good publicity, given the political ambitions of Chang, who now describes himself as a kind of high priest of unification.

I’ve not had time to give the entire 48-page booklet (the last two pages are lined for note-taking) a close read, but judging from what I’ve seen so far, some of it reads as if Chang’s grandson had written it, with one passage stating: “Taiwanese who oppose unification are like an ostrich … When Taiwan and China are reunited, China will be friends with the entire world.”

Chang’s booklet might be borderline silly, but the White Wolf has plans for Taiwan, plans that might not necessarily reflect what its 23 million people hope for their future. (Pictures 2 and 3 by the author)