Sedition, Taiwanese Style

An activist in the struggle for women's equality in Taiwan for more than a decade, the 35-year-old Lu came to Harvard in part to gain more legal knowledge to aid her human rights activities in her native country, Wang Shu-ying, a friend of Lu's, said this week. Before her studies abroad, Lu had set up a publishing house for feminist literature and a telephone hotline for women with family problems. The government closed both facilities. When she returned to Taiwan in 1978 after graduating from law school, Lu rejoined the group of lawyers, government officials, businessmen, doctors, students and workers comprising the growing opposition to the ruling Kuomintang (KMT), Nationalist Chinese Party--the only legal political party in Taiwan. What brought the group together was a desire to protest the oppression they felt from the mainland Chinese who established their own "Free Chinese" state on the island after the Communist victory in 1949.

The small but vocal opposition group demanded that the government end its 30 years of martial law and hold national elections to replace the aging members of the rubber stamp National Assembly, still dominated by the KMT. The government heeded the second demand--but only partially. It agreed to hold elections in December 1978 to fill 59 of the assembly's more than 1400 seats and allowed just two weeks for campaigning. Lu ran as an independent from her hometown of Taoyuan, an electronics center west of Taipei. During her short campaign, she advocated three rights for her fellow native Taiwanese: the right to know, the right to free speech, and the right to have a voice in their future.

"I got very political once I started running," Lu said in an interview earlier this year. "I based the campaign on the Taiwanese right to self-determination. Sometimes I even made crowds cry, reminding them of their history, how they had been invaded by the Portugese Spanish, Manchus, Japanese--all outsiders--and that it was much the same today. That the Kuomintang was not elected to rule us, that they were colonial rulers, too," she said.

A diplomatic move by the United States dashed the hopes of opposition candidates like Lu to gain seats in the assembly. On Dec. 16, 1978, halfway through the campaign, President Carter announced the opening of diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China. The KMT immediately called off the election, claiming the U.S.-Chinese move had precipitated a national emergency and uncertainty about the future. Taiwan remained, as it had been for 30 years, "effectively a one-party state," as a State Department official called it at a hearing before the House International Relations Committee in June 1977.

For several months after the government closed the electoral process to her, Lu continued her opposition activities underground. In August 1979, however, she became a vice president and editor of a new opposition publication, Formosa Magazine. Run by members of the opposition, Formosa Magazine grew increasingly vocal in calling for governmental and social reforms.

The publication became the voice for many of the Taiwanese who sought greater influence in their own government, Rep. Jim Leach (R-Iowa) told the House of Representatives on Dec. 20, 1979. "The magazine became a focal point for opposition points of view and its organizational structure came to function almost as a pseudo-political party. It was critical of one-party rule on the island and urged greater opportunity for political freedom for the native-born Taiwanese, who constitute 85 per cent of the population," Leach said.

Formosa Magazine printed 45,000 copies of its first issue and doubled its circulation in three months, according to a newsletter from the International Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in Taiwan (ICDHRT), an organization with offices in Seattle, Wash., and Japan which attempts to publicize the plight of political dissidents in Taiwan. With the increase in circulation, however, came an increase in attacks, both verbal and physical, against the publication from enraged private citizens. Opposition members suspect that Taiwan's secret police agencies, the Taiwan Garrison Command and the Investigation Bureau, sanctioned the abuses.

Despite the attacks, the magazine planned to sponsor a demonstration to commemorate International Human Rights Day on Dec. 10, 1979. It asked the government for permission to hold an outdoor rally in a park in central Kaohsiung, an industrial port city on the south coast of the island. Although the KMT denied the request, the magazine's staff decided to proceed with plans for the rally.

On the evening of Dec. 10, 1979, supporters of the magazine met at its office in Kaohsiung. Police and military forces cordoned off the building as a crowd estimated at several thousand gathered in the area. When between 200 and 300 of the demonstrators tried to leave the building to begin their march to the park, the authorities tried to restrain them.

"We were being boxed in by the riot trucks on one side and by a thin line of riot troops in full gear on the other side. When the people in the crowd on the sidelines saw the police attacking us, they rushed to our aid and pushed the riot police back, and they (the police) were scattered all over. I could see the flicker of fear in their eyes; they (the police) didn't really want to fight. They moved back very quickly," Linda Gail Arrigo, believed to be the only American to take part in the demonstration and wife of Formosa magazine manager Shih Ming-teh, recalled after the incident.

After the police retreated, the demonstrators and many onlookers returned to the Formosa office, where, Arrigo continued, "things were very peaceful: we had a large crowd around us, and we continued to sing Taiwan folk songs. There were many strong statements: 'We want human rights. We want democracy. We want an end to dictatorial government and martial law.'"

At about 10 p.m., as the organizers began trying to disperse the rally, "the riot police trucks arrived and smashed into the crowd," Arrigo said. In his report to the House, Rep. Leach said confrontations between government authorities and demonstrators continued until early morning. "What we saw, I think, was a tremendous anger at the authorities, perhaps more than I would have expected. We saw a tremendous rise in 'Taiwan consciousness' and a real cry against martial law," Arrigo said. "I would say that it was a major step forward in strengthening the identity of the Taiwan people, but whatever will happen now may not be pleasant, but it is a pleasure to see the people express themselves," she added.

What happened after the demonstration was, as Arrigo predicted, not pleasant. Less than 24 hours after the crowds dispersed, police started arresting more than 100 opposition activists, including Lu. The government also deported Arrigo and closed down Formosa Magazine. It had published only four issues." We thought we could resist arrests. We thought the Nationalists would have avoided this to seek further consensus and gain mass support. But we were wrong," she told the Christian Science Monitor shortly after leaving Taiwan. Leach described the government's reaction as "the largest mass arrest of opposition forces in Taiwan's recent political history."

Of the dozens arrested, the government charged eight with sedition, a crime which carries a sentence of seven years in prison to death. The eight have remained in custody since their arrests, while the government has postponed their trial several times. The latest delay occurred last week, after authorities allowed the dissidents to see relatives for the first time since their imprisonment.

Lu met with her brother and sister, who asked her if the authorities had treated her badly. Lu responded with a faint smile and said they had not, Gerrit van Derwees, U.S. coordinator for the ICDHRT, said earlier this week after talking with lawyers for the dissidents. As Lu met with her siblings, another prisoner, Lin Yi-hsiung, a lawyer and legal adviser to Formosa Magazine, told his mother that he had signed a confession involuntarily. Lin's mother later called a friend in Japan to describe her son's condition. Two hours after she made the call, she and Lin's two young daughters were found dead.

When the trial begins, it "will definitely be an open one" and those convicted will be punished on the basis of the evidence presented, not the public demands, a ranking KMT official said last month. The Taiwanese press has been running letters and articles accusing the "Formosa group" of "disrupting the stability of society" and demanding severe punishment.

Despite assurances of a fair trial, the government has taken steps to hinder the activities of defense lawyers, van Derwees said. Among the restrictions: they will have only three days to examine evidence collected by the government and will be allowed only to hand copy those materials; they will be permitted to meet with the defendants for only 40 minutes to discuss strategy, and the Taiwan Garrison Command, a secret police agency, will record those meetings; and they will not be able to cross-examine prosecution witnesses.

These violations of legal processes are the latest in a series of infringements on human rights that have increased in number since the Kaohsiung demonstration, which, said Leach, "could have been peaceful, demonstrating to outside observers that there was hope that the KMT authorities and the Taiwanese majority could work together in the exercise of democratic rights which many believe are essential to the future freedom and independence of Taiwan." Instead, Leach continued, "hardline elements among the ruling group have increasingly come to prevail." As a result, Lu and her fellow oppostion leaders remain in jail, victims of a system they have tried to change.

'I based the campaign on the Taiwanese right to self-determination. Sometimes I even made crowds cry, reminding them of their history...'