“The world turns and the world changes, but one thing does not change. In all of my years, one thing does not change, however you disguise it, this thing does not change: The perpetual struggle of Good and Evil,” is a quote from a play called The Rock by T.S. Eliot, a poet, essayist and playwright (1888-1965).
Mankind has to accept the world changes, but at the same time we do not have to accept that somehow this justifies a shift from good towards evil.
The bullish and aggressive narratives which currently dominate our lives, largely, it seems, as a result of social media, is clearly making for a more dangerous and unstable world. Sure we all accept the world will constantly change, but why do we apparently have to accept it changing for the worst?
The understanding of what the truth and freedom of speech actually mean is horribly clouded and people already shrug and say “Ah, we are now living in The Post Truth Era.” That such a phrase actually exists is absurd. Do we really accept that lying is now OK? Does that not undermine the whole rule of law, much less morality?
Let’s take freedom of speech, a long-cherished and hard fought for right of democracies everywhere and something billions of the eight billion of us on this planet, do not enjoy.
The recent headline stealing story of a mainland Chinese woman married to a local man who has had her Alien Resident Card (ARC) card revoked and is being deported from Taiwan, has thrown the issue into sharp relief.
Let’s look at the details of that case before we get into the broader issues of what exactly is freedom of speech and how the understanding of it is currently being distorted, mainly by those in a position of political power.
For our home example, I’ll use her TikTok label of Yaya.
Yaya’s assertion that her human rights were being violated because under Taiwan’s constitution she had the right of freedom of speech and her TikToks saying Taiwan was an awful country and China was well able to attack and take the island over and should do so, were protected speech.
Quite why she stayed here and did not return to China with her family if she thought Taiwan was such an awful place, is another question.
But her assertion that her rights to freedom of speech were violated is wrong because freedom of speech is not absolute.
It would seem that under law, her defence to deportation is flawed as her speech strays into the area of sedition and that is why she is being kicked out. Sedition is broadly defined as “conduct or speech inciting people to rebel against the authority of a state or monarch”. I’m a journalist not a lawyer, but it seems she is being ejected not for saying Taiwan should be part of China, but for advocating that China should take Taiwan by force.
She was strongly supported by the KMT and you don’t need to be a genius to analyse their motives.
By their actions in parliament and general rhetoric it seems obvious to all but the meanest intelligence that the Kuomintang are actively working to help China take control of Taiwan. This despite the almost perfect irony that the Kuomintang were founded on the principle of waging war against the CCP. Go figure?
‘By their actions shall you know them’ is a paraphrase of The Bible’s book of Matthew which basically says judge people's character and authenticity by their deeds and actions, not simply by their words or appearances.
But I digress.
Whether Yaya is simply seeking clicks and views and the accompanying money from TikTok, or whether she is something more sinister like an agent provocateur in the pay of Beijing is obviously open to question. You have to ask yourself if destroying your life and splitting up your family so effectively is not something you expect to be ultimately rewarded for?
Call it a conspiracy theory if you like, but parading in front of journalists and courting publicity even as she was thrown out of the country are the actions of someone expecting to be rewarded somehow. Or she is just as stupid as a rock.
To my mind, she is rightly being deported and the less of such people in Taiwan seeking to promote a China takeover, particularly by force of arms, the better.
But it does raise the issue that while some countries have strict sedition laws which can be used to stifle freedom of speech, Taiwan does not. The question is, should such laws be tightened given the threat from the mainland given that for Taiwan it could mean bombs, invasion and mass slaughter of civilians, not just a threat to the existing government.
Since martial law ended in July 1987, Taiwan has junked its strict anti-sedition laws and embraced democracy with a strong emphasis on freedom of speech. Clearly, this latest case of the outspoken Yaya means the government might need to look again at how sedition should be defined and handled in the future.
There would seem little hope of that while the KMT hangs onto its tiny parliamentary majority and is actively seeking closer ties with China, but when things change it would be well to revisit this and finesse the sedition laws here. Given the oft-made threats of direct violence and war towards the Taiwanese people by China, this would make a lot of sense.
But it is a tricky balancing act. Taiwan was right to pretty much abandon the strict sedition laws as they can easily be misused to subdue democracy and have been used historically to subdue populations and prevent political opposition to an incumbent administration.
During Taiwan’s White Terror Period (1949-1992) sedition laws were used to great effect by the KMT. This era ended in September 1992 with the repeal of Article 100 of the Criminal Code, allowing for the prosecution of "anti-state" activities. Therein lies an issue about perhaps changing the code, particularly given the ‘enemy’ is the same, China.
Thirty three years later, China is again a huge threat as it was in 1949. Maybe time for a rethink?
India and Hong Kong have both found their sedition laws particularly useful at times to stymie opposition groups.
In Hong Kong, the century old laws were used to great effect to prosecute democracy activists and these convictions sparked concerns over the impact on freedom of speech, in the wake of the Beijing-imposed national security law.
In India, the laws of sedition are still a powerful sanction used by the authorities to criminalise dissent and arrest critics of the government. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government uses these old laws to crack down on journalists, activists and others.
Surprise, surprise, sedition laws were pretty much a product of the Colonial Era which to a large extent came under British rule, certain in the case of Hong Kong and India that is the case. Other countries are just as guilty but these old laws in most parts of Asia are throwbacks from the Colonial Era, whichever powerful country involved was.
Do a Wikipedia search <Colonial empire> for a full list (which, incidentally, includes the United States…a nod to Trump’s ambitions for Greenland and the Gaza Strip). It really is an interesting list if you have not studied this subject or had much time for history and were too busy earning a living.
Many countries have laws of sedition but most don’t use them and some have softened them much like Taiwan has. However, the definition of Freedom of Speech is very much in play in global politics and it is a phrase being bandied about more and more.
The fact is there is no such thing as absolute freedom of speech, it seems daft that Elon Musk has declared himself to be a “free-speech absolutist”.
Much like the man, this is clearly absurd. Having bought Twitter he promptly banned a whole bunch of people from it who he didn’t like so is clearly a hypocrite. There is nothing illegal about being a hypocrite but it serves to remind the entire world the man is morally bankrupt and a fraud, Nazi salute notwithstanding.
On top of this, he cannot be ‘free-speech absolutist’ as he is threatening to sue Jamaal Bowman, an American politician and former educator for calling him a “thief and a nazi” during a television interview. Which is exactly why there is no such thing as absolute freedom of speech. If there was, defamation would not exist and that is preposterous.
Aside from the largely pointless ramblings of the likes of relative nobody in global terms like Musk, more insidious are the moves by US President Donald J Trump who is currently moving to stifle news reporting in a thinly disguised revenge attack on organisations critical of him in the past. Using free speech as a cover.
What we are not seeing cuts to the quick, as suddenly…freedom of speech becomes a problem.
Associated Press (AP) was banned for resisting Trump’s demand to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America” and other news organisations like Reuters and some European publications have been similarly affected.
Trump’s war on the truth and freedom of speech, together with his moves to replace it with slavish sycophancy from supportive outlets must be music to Chinese state media who are filling the vacuum with their own brand of world news.
Just as Trump is making inroads into the US Constitution, this attack on the First Amendment is an obvious one. Like dictators before him, including Hitler, Stalin and Mao, Trump seeks to directly control the narrative. His seemingly endless lies will be with us for a while yet until the American electorate comes to its senses and dumps him.
Surely, by now, most right thinking humans who have devoted some critical thought time to the subject must realise that Trump will sell Taiwan down the river if it suits his own ends, just like he has tried to do with Ukraine and their rare-earths.
Rare-earths…semiconductores, pause for thought. (not forgetting Greenland, Gaza etc)
"Democracy Dies in Darkness" is the official slogan of The Washington Post. Sadly for us all the United States, that one-time bastion of free speech, freedom and democracy is entering a darker phase where all those rights are at risk, even for America’s own population.
Tinkerty Tonk...
No comments:
Post a Comment