10:10 - A Day For Reflection

Today is the 10th of October, officially the National Day of the Republic of China that marks the birth of the R.O.C in 1911 in China.  This is for me a day to be celebrated in the way I might celebrate Columbus day in the US - not a day of celebration at all but a reminder of the now 67th year of the occupation of Taiwan by the Republic of China in exile.

- It is a day to remember the victims of 2-28 and the betrayal of Chiang Kai-shek in his refusal to allow Taiwanese a vote on implementation of the ROC Constitution and full democratic rights in 1947.

- It is a day to remember the bloody crack down on dissent by the KMT and her failed armies as they took out their defeat at the hands of the Japanese and CCP on innocent Taiwanese.

- It is a day to remember the 38 years of Martial Law, and the untold numbers of executions, beatings and torture ordered by Chiang Ching-kuo in his efforts to keep the KMT rigidly in control at any expense.

- It is a day to remember those who disappeared and those who gave their lives to apply the pressure needed to force the KMT to democratise their own country.

- It is a day to remember that even after sixty-seven years, sixty-three in exile, the KMT still insist that Taiwanese must love the R.O.C, still indoctrinate children in schools to love Sun Yat-sen and The Party, still revise history for their own ideological goals and still refuse to accept that their R.O.C no longer represents ‘China’ in the global community.  They still refuse to recognise Taiwan as their nation, and are ultimately aligned to the CCP in this abrogation of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  

There will no doubt be talk today in the international media, and on this social media platform, of Taiwan celebrating their national day.  And they will all be wrong.  Today, it is not Taiwan’s national day but the Republic of China-in-exile’s national day.  Indeed, it would be hypocritical of KMT President Ma to call this ‘Taiwan’s national day’ for he has already declared that Taiwan is not a nation-state but simply an ‘area’ of the ROC.  This is the KMT’s national day - most of the ROC flags strew around the streets were not put there by patriotic Taiwanese but by local KMT councils and town mayors, keen to impress The Party.

That is not Taiwan’s flag.  That flag was brought here and imposed on Taiwanese.  They did not cross the border, the border crossed them.  Their loyalty to and defence of that flag rests solely on the fact that it is the only flag they currently have the choice to wave, just as the ROC is the only polity they can choose.  That ‘choice’ came at gunpoint and on threat of missile attack. Taiwanese do not have a choice.  

On the day that the KMT give vent to their petty nationalism, this for me only marks another year of the colonial occupation of Taiwan.

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