Taiwan's Dissenters

...SUBTERRANEAN MINORITY Taiwan's Dissenters BY arnold abrams Taipei The coffee shop m the middle of Taipei was virtually empty the afternoon I rendezvoused there with an acquaintance who hves on Taiwan My companion, who likes to discuss the island's politics, might best be described as an aging student activist, well past his college days but clinging to campus affiliations The type is common at most American universities Although usually clad like collegians, they are older, and instead of mixing with the student body always hover on its fringe They sit in on lectures, and invariably attend political forums and protest gatherings Everyone in my college days used to know such individuals by sight We often nodded to them, but rarely learned their names, I don't recall anybody caring enough to inquire On Taiwan, however, some people care very much, usually men connected with the government They want to know who these offbeat characters are and, more important what they might be up to To avoid extensive surveillance and questioning, my acquaintance told me over coffee, he keeps on the move, rarely sleeping in the same place two consecutive nights He earns his living, he said, by translating novels, tutoring m English and writing magazine articles-usually under a pseudonym-for foreign publications But his real existence is tied to politics He fervently opposes the Nationalist regime of Chiang-Kai-shek, believes Taiwan should achieve some modicum of independence, and is awaiting the day when he and a small minority of hke-mmded citizens can surface as an opposition movement He has already waited half his life While all this was being told to me, a man entered the coffee shop-Chinese about 40, wearing suit and tie, carrying a newspaper He glanced around quickly, as if looking for a vacant table, then settled in an adjacent booth, right behind my companion-who caught my eye and abruptly changed the subject The man ordered a cup of tea and opened his newspaper My activist acquaintance, now talking avidly about a film he had seen, scribbled a note to me which read, "I leave, you stay Back m 10 minutes " Immediately afterward, he announced he had to go, thanked me for the coffee and left I stayed, trying to recall in how many grade-B movies I had seen this bit played No more than a minute passed before the man m the next booth finished his tea, folded his paper, and went to the cashier without summoning the waiter He paid his bill and walked out the door, taking the same direction as my companion Arnold Abrams is Southeast Asia correspondent of the Seattle Times Ten minutes later the fugitive returned, and nodded knowingly when I described the man's actions "We had better separate," he said "There's no point in looking for trouble " And so we parted Had the man indeed been a security agent, or was he simply someone taking midafternoon tea...

...The way I must live—is that freedom...

...I'll never know, but the answer is immaterial The real significance of the incident lies in what it reveals about the subterranean atmosphere of fear in Taiwan today The island now has the highest standard of living in Asia after Japan Its economy has grown nearly 10 per cent annually tor the last decade and per capita income has doubled m that time Factories are producing, businesses are burgeoning, consumers are buying But amid this boom, characterized by the government's liberal and enlightened fiscal policies, citizens continue to be harrassed and hunted, victims of the regime's political oppression It is all done discreetly, of course The average tourist will not see this seamier side of Taiwan life Nor, for that matter, will the average inhabitant-so long as he keeps his affairs apolitical and his nose out of other peoples' affairs Nevertheless, hundreds, perhaps thousands of individuals languish in prisons here for espousing the "wrong" political views In the name of freedom and the cause of anti-Communism, President Chiang and his ruling Kuomintang government can arrest, hold incommunicado and secretly convict any citizen on the island Two decades after Chiang's forces fled here from the China mainland, martial law still prevails on Taiwan It is enforced by a tight network of intelligence and security agencies, headed by the Garrison Command and supplemented by government informers on every level ot society This apparatus squelches meaningful political opposition and discourages intellectual dissent Critics of the regime live in fear of being followed, of having their phones tapped, mail opened and-ultimately-their freedom hindered by ever-watchful security agencies Rather than face this and fight, many disaffected Taiwanese choose, if they are allowed, to leave and live abroad Outsiders' indulgence is asked on such matters by seemingly sincere and decent men, some of them high-ranking military officials who accompanied Chiang here as young officers You must understand, they say, that the security measures are unavoidable because of the ongoing struggle against Communist evils These men speak wistfully of wives, children and parents left behind, and of 20 years without word from them Regaining the Mainland, reuniting the nation and rejoining their loved ones, they insist, must take precedence over the sort of legalistic luxuries only lucky Americans can afford "If it were your nation that had been taken over by Communists," one Nationalist Army colonel told me, "you would not be so concerned about protecting the rights of political dissenters You would be more worried about the damage they could do " Still, more critical observers-not just Americans, either-see less noble motives behind the regime's ironfisted rule For them, it all boils down to political survival The only way for 2 million Chinese exiles to dominate 12-odd million native Taiwanese, they contend, is through maintaining unremitting control over state power and military resources Mainland recovery ostensibly remains the government's goal But as the years go by and the feasibility fades, advocating the island's independence assumes a higher position in the pecking order of political sin "Everyone from Chiang on down knows by now that retaking the Mainland is sheer fantasy," confided one diplomatic official, a longtime Taiwan resident "Maintaining power for power's sake is all that's left, which is why this government treats talk about Taiwan's independence like a death threat That's just what it is, in effect" Thus it was no small setback for the ruling legime when Peng Ming-min, a leading advocate of independence, recently escaped from the island After enduring 13 months' imprisonment and almost five years' continual police surveillance, Peng disappeared in early January and turned up soon afterward in Sweden Government officials continue to agonize over how he did it and who helped him Blame initially was scattered in private over such disparate targets as the cia and Peking spies The consensus of most informed observers, though, is that organized, well-heeled sympathizers in Tokyo or New York were responsible Peng himself claims he has "no party, no political organization, no political power ' to fight Chiang, and that is doubtlessly true Taiwan nationalists are so few and fragmented as to hardly warrant the label of a "movement " Indeed, the most potent force backing Peng is fear The regime is afraid of this 47-year-old, articulate ex-law professor and his quixotic followers, and recognizes the potential for political upheaval here "If I were given one month's free speech on Taiwan, 1 could overthrow the government," Peng has asserted Considering the basic apathy of the island's population, that is probably too little time But the government is not about to risk any kind of test The authorities' apprehension is further reflected in the story of Hsieh Tsung-nin, a former university instructor who has undergone a grim ordeal because ot his political views Hsieh was one of two former students of Peng's jailed with the professor in 1964 The trio's crime was attempted publication of a pamphlet challenging Chiang's right to rule Taiwan and calling for independence Peng received an eight-year jail sentence, subsequently commuted after a year The two others, however, were imprisoned tor five years They were released last October Slight of build and youthtul-look-mg, the 35-year-old Hsieh shrugs off the 60-month segment of his life spent behind bars "It wasn't wasted," he said recently "Hundreds of us were together there, and we had some very good political discussions during the walking exercise In fact," he added in good English, "I think prison is the only place in Taiwan where you have tree speech " Like Peng, Hsieh was not permitted to return to the classroom after serving his sentence He found employment as a shipping clerk and led an uneventful existence for several months Then Peng escaped, and the ordeal resumed Heish's past and present associates, including members of the professor's family, were interrogated by security officials and put under varying degrees of surveillance Subjected to a form of senn-house arrest, he had full freedom of movement, but was kept under 24-hour watch by two-man teams of plain-clothesmen—one agent on foot, the other on a motorbike?that trailed him everywhere "They would stay within a few feet of me no matter where I went," Hsieh told me at a prearranged interview late one evening, after be had shaken his shadowers Generally, great ingenuity was not needed to elude the agents, he said, but it was bothersome and only prompted further harassment One day, though he decided he could tolerate this treatment no longer His determination led to a curious confrontation in a Taipei department store "I went into an elevator," he explained, "and naturally they followed I had had enough, so I spoke out I announced to the people in the elevator that these two men were secret police following me Nobody said anything When the door opened, I got out The two men followed Then, just as it was closing, I jumped back in They stopped the door and got back in, too Then I turned to the people again 'You see9' I said " The others in the elevator saw everything but said nothing "They just stared straight ahead," Hsieh commented "Nobody even smiled " The following day, Hsieh was warned by the police not to make any more scenes He might be jailed, he was told, for creating a "public disturbance " But his ploy did produce some results The shadowers now keep a more respectful distance, and something resembling a detente has developed between Hsieh and the security authorities "It was raining very hard the other day," he recounted, "and I couldn't get a taxi So I walked up to the agent on the motorbike and asked him to take me home He said sure, and we went home together, with me on the back " Despite the Keystone Cop character of these carryings-on, Taiwan politics is in fact a gnm game played for high stakes by both sides And while the odds remain stacked m the government's favor, men like Hsieh and my coffee shop companion promise that dissenters will continue to press their charges that Chiang's regime is unworthy, unrepresentative and illegitimate Taiwan's independence will be achieved, they believe when the 82-year-old President and his 60-year-old son, Chiang Ching-kuo, have passed from the scene "We have been waiting a long time," Hsieh said, "but the moment is coming One day the Mainlanders are going to look around and see that they have no leadership That is when we will move in " But in the meantime, Hsieh's willingness to have his views openly published could cost him his liberty, if not his life He insisted he was not afraid "I have nothing to lose, he declared "My freedom...

...I have no freedom to lose, nothing to lose, not as long as I stay on Taiwan and Taiwan remains in the hands of this government...