TYRANNY IN FREE' FORMOSA
TYRANNY IN FREE' FORMOSA Chiang Kai-shek3s Nationalist government of Taiwan (Formosa) has been a multi-billion-dollar beneficiary of the American policy of aiding the {Cfree world'' but it...
...Their homes are liable to sudden search without a warrant...
...Recently, a student at the University of Wisconsin, Hwang Chi-ming, a 35-year-old native of Taiwan, went back to do research and was convicted of sedition for taking part in meetings of the Taiwan Independence Movement in the United States...
...Political prisoners who are released after serving their terms, and members of the political opposition who have not yet been arrested, are constantly harassed...
...The prisoner's home is thoroughly searched...
...College students suffered the same penalty for similar statements made at a private home...
...According to current court interpretations, any strong verbal criticism of, or attack upon the government during an electoral campaign, for instance, may be construed as an "attempt to destroy national polity...
...All political offenses fall under the jurisdiction of courts-martial which generally exercise a summary jurisdiction without appeal...
...Bellhops, receptionists, pedicab-driv-ers, taxi-drivers, waiters, telephone operators, teachers, students, street-venNearly everybody enjoys The Progressive for Christmas dors, and prostitutes serve as informers to report on every real or imaginary sign of something suspicious...
...What makes a complete mockery of "justice" is the fact that the courts are administered as an integral part of the omnipotent Garrison Command of Formosa and are tightly under its control...
...The prisoner cannot meet his lawyer without strict surveillance by one of the judges in charge of the case, and the full transcript of their conversation is taken from tapes and made available for prosecutors and judges to study...
...Under such conditions, political defendants are always convicted, and the best they and their lawyers can do in court is confess guilt, express repentance, and enter a plea for mercy...
...Washington lends unwavering support to the Chiang Kai-shek regime, which it considers a bulwark of the Free World...
...Courts-martial presume the guilt of political defendants...
...Investigators apply four general methods of extracting confessions and denunciations...
...It may amount, in fact, to life imprisonment...
...Political detainees are held incommunicado from several months to several years at the Bureau of Investigation or at the Garrison Command's Security Section...
...The mere profession of a political opinion displeasing to the government, whether spoken or written, published or not, may be construed as "preparing to overthrow the government...
...The fundamental rights of individuals, such as freedom of opinion or of association, are considered by the Chiang government merely as modernistic window-dressing, part of the indispensable constitutional decor...
...It has been estimated that there are approximately two hundred executions and 1,500 arrests of political offenders each year out of a total population of only twelve million...
...The savagery of the revised law is best illustrated by citing a half-dozen of the political offenses stipulated in it, and by reporting how they have been construed: 1. "To plan to destroy national polity or to disrupt national territory, or to change the constitution or to overthrow the government by illegal means'3 "Putting above plan into execution" was punishable by from seven years to life imprisonment according to the criminal code of 1935, but in the 1949 ordinance the death penalty was made mandatory...
...Their applications for passports to travel abroad are rejected...
...The Garrison Command is the headquarters of intelligence services in Formosa and is responsible for assuring the "internal security" of the whole island...
...Personal papers, diaries, and correspondence are seized...
...Another prisoner witnessed eleven executions and about 120 new prisoners during his nine months of detention at a different prison in 1964...
...3. "Participating in a rebel organization or meeting33 This is punishable with a minimum of ten years imprisonment...
...In some countries of the "Free World," treatment of political opposition differs only in form from that practiced in Communist nations...
...If the prisoner is brought to trial, he is first transferred to a military prison...
...Such tracts are seized and any persons involved in their writing, publication, or distribution are arrested...
...A university professor was sentenced to ten years in prison under this article for having written down, but not published, opinions critical of the government...
...sometimes they are allowed to ply illegal trades such as printing and selling pornography, or operating a brothel...
...By sustaining the myth of an ongoing civil war against Peking and an eventual "return to the mainland," the Nationalist government achieves this central purpose: An unrepresentative Kuomintang minority prolongs its rule over ten million Formosans, with the aid of specially enacted laws that suspend democratic rights and produce a regime of terror...
...After being charged, the prisoner may write one letter per week of two hundred words to his family but not to friends, and may receive one letter under the same conditions...
...It keeps detailed, current dossiers on every adult citizen in Formosa, as it tried to do, without success, on the mainland before the Communists came to power there...
...Their homes and telephones are bugged, their correspondence censored...
...Punishments for certain political offenses wrere prescribed in the criminal code enacted by the Nationalists in 1935...
...Since Formosans have been inclined to confide their political grievances to foreigners, especially to Americans and Japanese, the government has gone so far as to bribe tourists and foreign students to act as part-time informers...
...When forced into the open, the government distributes, through the official news agency, a distorted account which newspapers may reproduce only word for word...
...He was sentenced to fifteen years in prison...
...But these countries, concerned with their Free World image, are obliged to find means of destroying their internal opposition without appearing to be either undemocratic or totalitarian...
...The defendant's lawyer is looked down upon by the court and subjected to harassment and anonymous threats...
...6. "In need of reform.33 Even when a defendant cannot be formally convicted, the court still has an arbitrary power to decide that he is "in need of reform," and may send him to a concentration camp in Pan-Chiao, fifty-nine miles from Taipei...
...A Formo-san businessman who was a candidate in a local election made campaign speeches attacking the Nationalist government and privileged refugees from the mainland...
...The editor was convicted without being allowed to cross-examine the "rebel...
...There is no dining hall...
...government files are searched and agents and informers receive special orders to collect additional information on his case...
...Judicial independence" has never been anything but a dead letter under the Nationalist government...
...Police tasks presently include the surveillance and harassment of persons deemed to be of the opposition, examination of passport applications, and the rounding up of election votes for government candidates...
...The author of this article, who has first-hand knowledge of conditions in Taiwan, has understandably requested that his name be withheld...
...The moronic quality of the officer-judges further debases these courts...
...The Bureau of Investigation under the Ministry of Justice and the Security Section of the Garrison Command of Formosa are the two principal agencies that now arrest political offenders...
...Since its retreat across the Formosa Strait in 1949, the Nationalist government of Taiwan has considered itself to be at war with the "rebel" Communist government on China's mainland...
...4. "Propagating rumors or transmitting false information harmful to public order or social tranquillity.33 This is punishable with from seven years to life imprisonment...
...A prisoner, especially if he is For-mosan by origin, will be subjected to lengthy and severe interrogation as to whether there is any U.S...
...Their families, relatives, and friends in Formosa are savagely persecuted...
...First, inducements such as the prospect of release, or, if the prisoner is socially prominent or influential, the offer of a government post...
...But behind the facade of "democracy" in Taiwan there is a garrison state ruled by military power, and a system of laws and courts that denies any vestige of real freedom to ten million Taiwanese, or for that matter, to the two million mainland Chinese who retreated to the island with Chiang...
...The prisoner must write a full autobiography beginning with his grandparents, and including every trivial detail about his personal life, his distant relatives, and passing acquaintances...
...Foreigners' rooms in hotels and boarding houses are often searched in their absence, and any tape-recording found will probably be played...
...The outspoken anti-Americanism of the secret agents of the Nationalist government—a regime that holds power only because of massive U.S...
...Guards may interrupt any conversation with the prisoner if they do not like its tone or import, or if they consider it detrimental to the government's interest...
...Chiang's government, as did the former Japanese administration, takes a careful census...
...All his correspondence is strictly censored, copied, and studied...
...support—is part of the paranoiac pattern of the government's policies...
...In actual practice, Taiwan's authoritarian regime sets up a grinder with two wheels: One is a harsh and arbitrary set of laws...
...Third, intimidation by such means as arresting or executing without trial members of the prisoner's family, his relatives, or close friends...
...Since the Nationalist government is technically at war with the Chinese Communist government, any criticism of the Nationalist government can be considered by the court to be "advantageous to rebels...
...Many of them will be hauled away, from time to time, for several months of investigation, either to frighten them into inactivity or to extract information...
...A complete transcript of their conversation is sent to the judges and prosecutors...
...the other is a court system composed of fanatically indoctrinated judges, aided by secret police...
...Any participant in an organization or meeting in which anti-government opinion is expressed may be tried under this article...
...Secret agents watch the activities of foreign tourists and students, prying into their contacts and correspondence with local people...
...Involvement in a rebellious plot is not necessary...
...Every office, factory, big store, or school is required by law to set up a "security office," with full-time officers appointed by the government to keep security files on everyone under its jurisdiction...
...The officer-judges of courts-martial are less concerned to show judicial scruples and fairness toward political defendants than to display their political zeal and loyalty to the regime...
...As their reward, part-time informers are paid...
...prisoners eat out in the open, on the ground, whatever the weather...
...TYRANNY IN FREE' FORMOSA Chiang Kai-shek3s Nationalist government of Taiwan (Formosa) has been a multi-billion-dollar beneficiary of the American policy of aiding the {Cfree world'' but it remains one of the tightest tyrannies on earth...
...These courts, which enforce a special set of laws, deliberately broad and ambiguous as such laws generally are in authoritarian states, have wide discretion in the matter of interpreting and applying the law...
...Under this article, when a popular magazine editor's plan of forming a new political party began to gain enthusiastic support among the people of Formosa, he was sentenced to ten years upon the alleged "discovery" of a "rebel" on his editorial staff...
...The court determined the meeting had been of leftist tendency, although it conceded the defendant had not engaged in political activities since then...
...After charges are formally brought, a prisoner is allowed to see his family, but not friends, for ten minutes once a week...
...The officer-judges are distinguished less by legal erudition than by political suitability...
...They also approve or deny passport applications...
...The vaunted "return to the mainland," a pure hoax in military terms, also serves to guarantee a continuing flow of financial and military aid from the United States...
...These officers report on political leanings and public and private behavior...
...When she took refuge in Formosa she was tried under this article and sentenced to fifteen years in prison...
...The wheels mesh, the machine rolls smoothly and efficiently, and the opposition is automatically purged away...
...Finally, mental or physical torture including continuous interrogation, which may last more than one hundred hours, beating, electric shock, tearing out fingernails, and pouring peppered gasoline into the prisoner's nostrils...
...Under their direction, the regular police, whose political involvement has lately increased, also make such arrests...
...Trials are held in secret...
...Second, ruses such as planting a stool-pigeon disguised as a fellow-prisoner, or falsely promising a lenient sentence...
...Revenge is taken on those who engage in anti-government activities abroad...
...Investigators cite the downfall of Synghman Rhee of South Korea and Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam as proof of U.S...
...Secret agents, planted as servants or as pedicab-drivers in front of their homes, keep watch on their visitors...
...Preparation or conspiracy" for such an attempt carried a penalty of six months to five years penal servitude in the code of 1935, but the ordinance of 1949 provided for a minimum of ten years in prison...
...A school teacher was sentenced to fifteen years for attending a pacifist meeting thirty years earlier as a student in Tokyo...
...He will be encouraged, induced, and forced to divulge everything about everyone he knows in Formosa and abroad, and to denounce as many as possible...
...5. "Making propaganda, by means of writing, books, or speech, which is advantageous to rebels.33 This is punishable with at least seven years penal servitude...
...Except for cases which circumstances bring to public attention—the arrest of a widely-known professor, for example—the government does not allow newspapers to publish reports on political offenders and their trials...
...New "discoveries" are I said, The Progressive for Christmas is a giant value dredged up, and personal vendettas gratified...
...Current interpretation of the word "rebel" includes not only Communists, but anyone who voices opposition to the government...
...Informers are also particularly busy in printing offices, ready to report any attempts to print anti-governmental tracts...
...The Nationalist Chinese government in Formosa offers an outstanding example of how such an authoritarian regime carries on brutal repressions of freedom while posing as a bastion of democracy...
...The distinction between regular police and secret agents has begun to blur...
...support for his opposition to the Nationalist government...
...Political prisoners are scattered across Formosa in special prisons, including a tiny rocky island off the east coast...
...It is estimated that full-time secret agents and part-time informers total more than one million, or one for every twelve citizens...
...Such costly equipment contrasts with the minimal medical care and primitive accommodations provided in prisons...
...Martial law has been in effect in Formosa since 1949...
...The Editors...
...As the defendant has no right to withhold facts, he is compelled to build the case against himself...
...In a special ordinance of 1949, President Chiang Kai-shek drastically increased the penalties prescribed in that code and greatly enlarged its scope...
...The latest technological devices are installed in prison cells to watch and record in secret every utterance and movement of the prisoners...
...Any Formosans who stay in hotels may expect to have someone burst in on a flimsy pretext, such as repairing wires or plumbing, or having mistaken the room for another...
...sympathies with, and support for, opponents of existing governments...
...Their numbers are secret, but one prisoner who spent six months in 1965 at a military prison witnessed eight executions and the arrival of about ninety newcomers...
...A housewife, while living under Communist rule on the mainland, had been ordered by a Communist agent to copy some Communist propaganda placards for distribution in her district...
...The term of "reform" is three years, subject to unlimited renewal in case of "further need," so that a "reform" sentence carries all the threat of formal conviction...
...Only after formal charges are presented and the final indictment is drawn up against him may the prisoner hire or see a lawyer...
...Two years ago, the Nationalist government felt obliged to release an eminent law professor, Peng Ming-min, who had been convicted for signing a declaration that called for a "new constitution" to recognize the separate existence of the Formosan nation as "a responsible member of the free world" The professor is still under house-arrest, and the two co-signers of the declaration are still in jail...
...2. "Protecting or providing shelter to a rebel!3 This is punishable with death, life imprisonment, or a minimum of ten years in prison...
Vol. 31 • December 1967 • No. 12
