Ma: ... Taiwan has also become the freest country in the world for those wishing to assemble or parade.

[Taipei Times] EDITORIAL: Ma's ironic Human Rights Day

Thursday, Dec 11, 2008, Page 8

At the invitation of the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) delivered a keynote speech yesterday marking International Human Rights Day in Taipei.

In his speech, Ma expressed the wish that the legislature would speedily approve the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights to show the importance Taiwan attaches to human rights. ...

[China Post] Ma calls for legislative endorsement of human rights covenants

President Ma Ying-jeou yesterday called on lawmakers to endorse two documents for the protection of human rights, but the opposition camp claimed that human rights conditions have been back pedalling since he took office in May.

Ma asked the Legislature to give its long-delayed endorsement to two international human rights documents to help implement human rights protection in Taiwan. ...

Comment:

By far the best statement is: In his speech, Ma said: “The government has worked incessantly to uphold human rights ... Taiwan has also become the freest country in the world for those wishing to assemble or parade.”

The freest country in a wold only including China and North Korea???
If not, Mr. Ma just lied in public and obvious for million of people.

Sorry, maybe I have always been in the wrong places in this world, but I would even call the cabinets ideas for a new assembly law are in my eyes extremely restrictive.

I presented the German Assembly law some time ago and there are much more liberal countries in Europe.

I live in a country with gay marriage, weed smoking and a liberal Jew as our capitals mayor and I would state, Mr. Ma has just been in the wrong countries.

Support and Advice to Wild Strawberries

Hello Wild Strawberries,

First of all, I want to congratulate you guys on a successful march on Sunday. It just goes to show what people power can accomplish when it is organized and peaceful. However, I was disturbed by an article I read in the Taipei Times today that said KMT officials went to Washington D.C. and denied that police had stopped protesters from waving Republic of China flags or that they closed down the record store that was playing patriotic Taiwanese music. Hopefully NGOs such as Freedom House and Heritage Foundation will remain incredulous about the KMT's version of things, but I think the Strawberries can help counteract the KMT misinformation campaign. If any of you personally know someone who had an ROC flag taken from them, why not have them write letters to the Heritage Foundation and US Congress, giving their first-hand account of what actually took place? Of course, the more people involved the better. I personally saw a flag taken from a women on Taiwanese television and am willing to testify on what I saw.

I think it also would be a good idea for Taiwanese abroad to act in solidarity with the Wild Strawberries in Taiwan in order to help the movement make a greater international impact. I live in Taiwan now, but am from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where there are universities such as Carnegie Mellon, Pitt, and Duquesne and many Taiwanese both teach and take classes at these institutions. There are of course many more Taiwanese on the west coast of the US, in New York City, and all throughout Europe as well. I know it would not be easy to organize abroad, but it would be worth the effort, since not many people seem to know what is going on in Taiwan right now, or they may be getting their information from unreliable sources-- like Ma's stooges.

In Solidarity,

Scott Beck
Taipei, Taiwan

Honour Chiang Kai – shek, the worlds number 4

In the list of the biggest mass murders in human history:

1.) Joseph Stalin, Communist, Soviet Union, 1929-1953, 42,672,000
2.) Mao Tse-tung, Communist, China, 1923-1976, 37,828,000
3.) Adolf Hitler, Fascist, Germany, 1933-1945, 20,946,000
4.) Chiang Kai-shek, Militarist/Fascist, China, 1921-1948, 10,214,000

The few thousand or ten thousand he killed in Taiwan could not really help him to get a better rank. Hitler was just one number to big for him. But at least Chiang –Kai – shek could die peacefully and wealthy, knowing his son would do a good job.

He receives congratulations in every local Memorial Hall (but he dislikes Democracy Memorial Halls).

"Named must your fear be before banish it you can."--Democracy in Danger: No Military on campus.

“Named must your fear be before banish it you can.”
As Master Yoda said:
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2008/11/28/2003429730 (correct link)

While people finally demonstrate against the parade and assembly law (years to late), they should recognize military instructors in schools and universities as a much bigger danger for democracy.

I visited a number of Schools and universities in my life. None of them needed any military instructors to guarantee safety on campus. I did not even know that safety in a school or University is something to worry about.

Actually in the countries I went to school and University a military instructor would be considered to be a mayor security risk and a danger for freedom and democracy.

Why a military instructor has any qualifications in counselling seems to be a hidden secrete. Usually people would hire a PhD in Psychology for such a difficult job.

So why are this guys needed? What purpose do they full fill and who controls them? Who controls the army in general?

There can only one constitution and one law in a country and its army must be under this system and not beside or above.

The first principle in a modern army in a democratic country must be to safe and honour this democracy.

Drill and discipline is necessary to make an army able to operate, but someone should not understand it as a training just to blindly follow commands (that would be fascism), but as a training to make responsible decisions under pressure, responsible in the light of ethics and constitution.

Military instructors are the opposite of what is needed. They make the society a part of the army.
In a democracy the army must be part of the society. So civil instructors would be needed in the army to teach soldiers and especially young officers the fundaments of a democratic society and the ethics they need to make decisions in a responsible way. These instructors should be independent of political influence, for example a priest or a monk or a professor of law or history or politics, …

To abolish military instructors immediately is a conditio sine qua non for a country that is even thinking about to use the word democracy to describe its political system.

As there are rumours that military instructors work as spies for the government to collect information’s about students active in the protests, it might be the time for a counter strike and photograph and identify the military instructors, as they are one of the main enemies of democracy.

They must be named to be banished.