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Taiwan ex-dissidents remember democracy breakthrough
AFP - Wednesday, December 9
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Taiwan ex-dissidents remember democracy breakthrough
TAIPEI (AFP) - – Thirty years ago a group of Taiwanese opposition activists staged what was meant to be a peaceful human rights protest. Instead, it proved to be a turning point in ending one-party rule on the island.
On the evening of December 10, 1979, members of the island's fledgling opposition gathered in the southern city of Kaohsiung.
The demonstration erupted into violence and several leaders were arrested, but far from silencing the opposition movement, the government's crackdown fuelled their supporters and publicised their cause.
"The incident made big headlines in local newspapers, and an increasing number of people became aware of what we had been struggling for," said Yao Chia-wen, one of the main figures in the protest.
What became known as the "Kaohsiung Incident" marked a breakthrough in the campaign to end the stranglehold of the Kuomintang, or KMT, which had arrived from the mainland in 1949 after losing a war to the communists, he said.
"From that time on, the ruling party became more cautious in cracking down on campaigns in the streets," Yao, now 71, told AFP.
For three decades, the KMT had managed to keep its monopoly on power, but as the island became more prosperous and its citizens better educated, the party's control began to slip.
The Kaohsiung demonstration, which unofficial estimates said involved between 10,000 and 30,000 people, was intended as a peaceful call for human rights, but dozens were injured when protesters clashed with police.
In the following days, police rounded up the organisers, including Yao. Numerous reports document their maltreatment in detention. They received jail terms of 12 years to life, but it only earned them public sympathy.
"It was a key event because of the lawyers who became interested and came in to help the opposition," said Bruce Jacobs, an expert on Taiwan at Australia's Monash University, who is writing a book on the incident.
Among those lawyers was a promising attorney in his 20s, Chen Shui-bian, who later became president of Taiwan but is now facing a life sentence for abuse of power while in office from 2000 to 2008.
"It was through defending the Kaohsiung Incident defendants that they became involved in the opposition," said Jacobs.
In elections in 1980, relatives of the jailed dissidents, among them Yao's wife, ran as candidates and found strong support.
The rest of the decade saw the island's gradual but inexorable march towards democracy, with the opposition Democratic Progressive Party established in 1986 and martial law lifted in 1987.
Chen's election as president in 2000 crowned a remarkable, and remarkably peaceful, rise to power for a former group of dissidents.
Yao, who served seven years of his 12-year sentence, rose through the ranks of Taiwan's political system to become head of a key government body.
Looking back, he is proud of the democratic system that he helped create.
"It is strong enough to prevent Taiwan from sliding back into one-party rule," he said.
Observers agree, arguing that a key sign of the political development in Taiwan is the evolution of the KMT into a genuinely democratic party, now headed by President Ma Ying-jeou.
"The KMT now is a very different party than under Chiang Ching-kuo," Jacobs said, referring to the president during the Kaohsiung Incident.
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