Taiwan ex-leader jailed for life

BBC, 11 September 2009

Taiwan's former President Chen Shui-bian has been sentenced to life in prison after being found guilty of corruption by a court in Taipei.

Mr Chen was charged with embezzlement, taking bribes and money laundering, involving a total of $15m (£9m) while in office from 2000-2008.

Mr Chen had denied the charges, saying they were politically motivated.

His wife, Wu Shu-chen, already jailed for perjury in the case, was also sentenced to life for corruption.

'Illegal' sentence

Taipei District Court convicted Mr Chen on six charges and Mrs Wu on seven charges. The were also fined $15m.

"Chen Shui-bian and Wu Shu-chen were sentenced to life in prison because Chen has done grave damage to the country and Wu because she was involved in corruption deals as the first lady," said court spokesman Huang Chun-ming.

CHEN SHUI-BIAN SENTENCES Life sentence for embezzling $3.15m from a presidential fund Eight years for money laundering Lesser sentences for taking $12m in bribes and kickbacks Differing views on Taiwan trial

A spokesman for Mr Chen said the sentence was "illegal", pointing to a decision to replace the judges in mid-trial. The former president has said he will appeal.

Mr Chen has previously said the charges were constructed by the ruling Kuomintang (KMT) government in a political vendetta. He has admitted accepting money but said it was campaign contributions.

Several dozen of his supporters were outside the court on Friday as the verdict was given, waving placards declaring his innocence.

Unprecedented trial

Mr Chen and his wife were both sentenced to life for embezzling $3.15m (£1.9m) from a special presidential fund.

They received lesser sentences on the charges related to accepting at least $9m in bribes from a Taiwanese company to help it sell a piece of land to the government and of accepting nearly $3m more in kickbacks for helping a contractor gain a government project.

Mrs Wu had already been sentenced on 2 September to one year in prison for perjury for asking her children to lie in court.

Mr Chen's supporters say he is being persecuted

The three-year case also involved close family members of the couple, as well as former aides and government officials.

Their son and daughter-in-law received sentences ranging from 20-30 months for money laundering. Other relatives received suspended sentences. Two former advisors were given sentences of 16 and 20 years in prison.

The case, involving revelations of corruption at the highest levels, has gripped the nation, says the BBC's Cindy Sui in Taipei.

It is unprecedented in Taiwan's short history as a democracy. Direct presidential elections were first held in 1996, after one-party rule ended in the 1980s.

Many expected a guilty verdict but some believed the trial was political revenge on the part of the new ruling party.

Mr Chen and his Democratic Progressive Party favoured Taiwan's independence from the Chinese mainland, angering Beijing as well as the pro-China Kuomintang (KMT) in Taiwan.

Relations between Beijing and Taipei have been improving since the KMT, under President Ma Ying-jeou, took office last year.

Taiwan has been ruled separately from China since the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949, when the defeated Kuomintang retreated to Taiwan to create a self-governing entity.

But Beijing sees the island as a breakaway province which should be reunified with the mainland, by force if necessary.

Taiwan's plan to take back mainland

By Cindy Sui

BBC, 7 September 2009

Most people in China and Taiwan might think they know what happened after the long and bloody civil war between the Chinese Nationalist Party and the Communist Party ended in 1949.

But recently declassified government archives have revealed a previously unknown secretive plan by Taiwan's late President Chiang Kai-shek to take back mainland China.

Chiang and his troops had fled to Taiwan after losing the war to the Communists but, despite great obstacles, he was obsessed with the idea of taking back the land he had lost.

According to these newly-revealed government documents, by the 1960s Chiang thought the time was right to launch a counter-attack, given the devastating famine Mao Zedong's leadership had unleashed and the possibility China would soon have a nuclear weapon.

The US was fighting the Vietnam War then, and Chiang knew he needed US military assistance if he were to succeed so he offered to help the Americans fight the war in Vietnam in exchange for US support.

Washington objected to Chiang's suggestions, but Chiang went ahead with his preparations anyway.

Top secret

The declassified information - photocopies of which went on public display in Taiwan for the first time in May - show that Chiang's planned offensive, called the Guo Guang [National Glory] Project, involved 26 operations including land invasions, special operations behind enemy lines and raids against the enemy.

Chiang Kai-shek was obsessed with the idea of taking back mainland China

Chiang also instructed his son Chiang Ching-kuo to come up with a plan to launch an airborne attack on southern China's Fujian and Guangdong provinces.

All of this was top secret at the time.

In 1965, the plans were ready. Soldiers and officers drew up their wills, while the top brass were trying to choose the most suitable "D-Day" to deploy their troops, according to the archives.

But Beijing had discovered the plan. On 6 August 1965, two Taiwanese naval vessels assigned to transport troops on a reconnaissance mission were sunk by Communist forces. About 200 soldiers were killed.

In November the same year, another vessel sent to drop off supplies for soldiers stationed on one of Taiwan's outlying islands was hit by Communist torpedoes, killing some 90 soldiers.

The heavy loss of life surprised Chiang Kai-shek. He then realised China had significantly improved its naval capability. Chiang was forced to scale back and eventually abandon his plan.

But according to Gen Huang Chih-chung, who was an army colonel at the time and was part of the planning process, Chiang never completely gave up the desire to take back China.

"Even when he died, he was still hoping the international situation would change and that the Communists would be wiped out one day."

Shift in focus

The failure of Chiang's plan changed the course of Chinese and Taiwanese history.

The Taiwanese "shifted the focus to modernising and defending Taiwan instead of preparing Taiwan to take back China," said Andrew Yang, a political scientist specialising in Taiwan-China relations at the Taipei-based Council of Advanced Policy Studies.

Chiang's son, who later succeeded him as president, focused on maintaining peace between the mainland and Taiwan.

Details of this chapter in history were kept secret for 44 years, and were only revealed when the tourism department in Taoyuan County managed to convince the ministry of national defence and the national library to give it access to the archives.

"There were 26 planned operations, but the department of defence only kept documents on 10 of them. The others were all destroyed," said Hsieh Shyang-ling, a spokeswoman for the Taoyuan tourism department.

"Chiang Kai-shek didn't want people to know. What we have access to are only some of the documents."

It remains unclear how many soldiers died in the preparations leading up to the plan that was never actually carried out.

"To this day, some of their families might not even know how they died," Andrew Yang said.

Chiang even built a secret bomb shelter in case of all-out war

The documents are now displayed in what was once a secret command centre in the scenic mountains of Taoyuan, which the tourism department opened to the public for the first time in May.

Hundreds of tourists visit the area each day, including some Chinese tourists.

"We feel that since this history existed, we should not hide it. We want to tell people there was this part of history," Ms Hsieh said.

The now elderly Gen Huang said he hoped lessons could be learned from history.

"Relations between Taiwan and China have totally changed now. I hope it will develop peacefully," he said. "There's no need for war."

司馬觀點：達賴 再會吧

作者：江春男
來源：2009年09月04日蘋果日報
超克評論：台灣人對得起達賴喇嘛嗎？(by 佛國喬)

達賴在全世界訪問旅行，所到之處均受到熱烈歡迎，如有人不爽，一定與中國大陸有關。這次他在台灣遭受不少奚落與抗議，顯示北京因素在台灣社會所發揮的作用。但是他的救災與祈福法會，透過現場報導，負面雜音大幅消失，在他臨走前夕，各界依依不捨，不知他能否再來。

北京指控 含血噴人

北京不對台灣採取一些報復措施，就不像共產黨政權了，但北京如知道台灣 的民心向背，一定不敢任意妄為。過去，北京曾經因達賴訪問而依例懲罰德國、法國、加拿大等西方國家，有人統計這個懲罰期，平均約四個月，懲罰之力度則依各 國國力大小而有所區別，此次北京對台處置是投鼠忌器，或軟土深掘，大家可以拭目以待，國共平台發生什麼神奇作用，更值得觀察。
中共對達賴的態度與時俱進，在鄧小平和胡耀邦時期比較開明，那時北京曾考慮讓流亡政府派人回大陸擔任老師和翻譯，後來發生六四事件無疾而終。達賴代表與北京談了七、八次，前後二十年，來來去去，原地踏步，主因是北京領導人信心不足，無人敢作主。

北京指控達賴要把大西藏從中國版圖分裂出去，這是含血噴人的文革手法。藏族所屬的自治區、自治州和自治縣，分布在三、四個省，其人口比小西藏多一倍以上，包括達賴老家在內，要達賴放棄大西藏，西藏不可能實行有意義的自治。

達賴不能訪問香港和新加坡，台灣是唯一可以讓漢人與藏人自由對話的華人社會。屈從北京意志，不讓達賴來訪，台灣有淪為第二個香港之虞，對北京更是愚不可及，因為達賴是西藏問題和平解決的最後機會。