How to be a ‘die-hard’ separatist
By Paul Lin 林保華
Taipei Times 2024.8.17
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) on Wednesday last week said it would “use legal means to punish die-hard Taiwanese independence separatists.” The TAO’s latest list of expanded “Taiwanese independence separatist” targets include former premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌), former legislative speaker You Si-kun (游錫?), National Security Council (NSC) Secretary-General Joseph Wu (吳釗燮), Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴), Minister of National Defense Wellington Koo (顧立雄), Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators Tsai Chi-chang (蔡其昌), Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) and Wang Ting-yu (王定宇), NSC Deputy Secretary-General Lin Fei-fan (林飛帆) and Government Watch Alliance spokesperson Chen Jiau-hua (陳椒華). Nearly all of those listed are members of the DPP.
Are there truly only 10 “die-hard Taiwanese separatists?” That number is far too low. Are they truly the most prominent “separatists”? How was this list cooked up exactly? Were the listees chosen based on their age, experience, speeches or actions? However much we look into the matter, the connections seem absent.