Declaration of Free Taiwan

ON the very day of February 28 of 2005, we come to the gathering to pronounce the meaning of our existence, the meaning of Taiwan’s existence. We get together to commemorate a day, on which a shocking incidence of massacre happened in Taiwan fifty-eight years ago. Ever since the incidence, people in Taiwan have been storing up a formidable force of resistance out of fear and anger in their hearts, which has written the history of a struggle against the authoritarian ruler from China. The Incidence of February 28 is one of the most painful memories in our past, an unforgettable lesson that keeps us up and on for freedom and democracy in Taiwan.

We come to the gathering on this very day, to pronounce that neither any nation nor any individual could ever have the right to decide our fortune and future without our consent, without the consent of the Taiwanese people as a whole.

Taiwan has never been treated on an equal stand. During the first three quarter of the past 400 years, we had never been an independent nation. We had been ruled by different occupation powers or regimes, each succeeded by the other. Not until the beginning of the 20th century our people did know about freedom and democracy, when native intellectuals among our forefathers, started to learn from democratic progressive countries. They brought into Taiwan the ideas of democracy and started to fight against the colonial ruler. Although they failed, the seeds of democratic ideas were planted into our hearts during the Japanese occupation period and are destined to flourish in our time.

Japan tumbled from its 50 years’ ruling over Taiwan as a consequence to WWII and the KMT regime, then, stepped in the scene as the successive colonial ruler. However, the rebelling bloods of our forefathers past over onto the descendants, and our voice demanding for democracy can never be silenced. Even under the high pressure of suppressions, our fore fighters had never stopped challenging the legitimacy and fighting against the injustice of the KMT regime. In the four decades from 1947 to 1987, the innocent Taiwanese people has experienced the Incidence of February 28 Massacre and the Hunt Down during the White Terror in the 50s, 60s and 70s. Thousands of people were killed or put into political jails. Their sentenced service term exceeds 100 thousand years in total. Those people of our past generations paid with their youth and lives. Thousands of families were destroyed. That was the price we Taiwanese people paid in the sanguinary history of suppressions against our struggle for freedom and democracy.

Taiwan did not turn to be a really free democratic country until the last ten years of the previous century. In other words, we have just a sip of the nectar of freedom and democracy for little more than a decade. Nevertheless, we cherish the achievements of the long struggle so much as to sit idling with the knowledge that one of our neighbors, China, is pointing at us with about 700 missiles, threatening to annex a conquered Taiwan, or with the knowledge that a world power, the USA, forbids our government from going to the left or the right. These two huge nations exercise great influence on our existence as well as on our fortune and future.

We understand very well that the USA, in consideration of her own interests, must deal with the rising power of China and bargain for their mutual benefits, but we cannot agree with Taiwan’s role as a pawn to be sacrificed in their bargain. We would like to be a co-existing brotherly nation and wish to start a dialog with China for the normalization, but we cannot accept being annexed as a part of China.

Taiwan takes her position as the 16th among the trading countries. She is the most renowned IT hardware manufacturer in the world. Our national income per capita has risen to 13 thousand US dollars to be one of the wealthiest countries. We are a respectable nation paying great attention to our responsibilities and human concerns toward the international community. However, the United Nations rejects us. We are not allowed to be a member. We wonder where the sense of justice in the UN could be found. Does the Universal Declaration of Human Rights mean anything for the UN? Or, is it under the command of such permanent members in the Security Council as China and the USA to be locked in a drawer?

Be God our witness! We come to this gathering to declare to the world, by the spirits of our forefathers, that Taiwan is an independent and sovereign country whose people is among the most peaceful ones. Despite of the UN’s negligence of her pursuit of justice and the spirit of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, despite of the US heedlessness of the spirit of her very own foundation, despite of some democratic countries suppressing their sense of justice in front of the power of China, regardless the fact that Taiwan’s wish to be an independent nation is always put away by other peoples, we will keep on telling them with a clear voice, feeble but firm: Taiwan’s existence shall be respected!

Be Heaven our witness! We come to this gathering to declare by the spirits of our forefathers that Taiwan, small in size and population, is our homeland forever. She is the only motherland to where our hearts always return. She is the place where the spirits of our forefathers rest. We were born in Taiwan. We grew up in Taiwan. Our kinsmen, kinswomen, friends and beloved ones are living together in this homeland where we find imprints of our steps in every tree and every plant, in the alternation of seasons and in the variety of folklores. In this homeland, we share common memories as well as dreams and hopes. We love the nurturing motherland. We love our country.

We will devote our whole lives and do whatever we can to protect our country, our land and people, to defend our freedom and democracy, to secure our way of life and the rights to be freemen as we were born to be free. We will not allow invasion and occupation of our land, deprivation of our freedom and democracy or devastation of our home – for this is and will always be our homeland.

This declaration will be passed on from year to year and from generation to generation. This declaration will be broadcasted from the top of the utmost mountain of Taiwan to the most beautiful seashores in the world, from cities to villages. We will not stop making our voice heard until Taiwan becomes a real independent nation, free of interferences from external powers. We will not stop until our feeble but resolute voice heard by the whole world.

Heaven be our witness! We declare this solemnly by the spirit of our forefathers to all peoples in the world!