The Anwar Ibrahim of Taiwan

The Anwar Ibrahim of Taiwan
The Framing of Fung Hu-hsiang
Bevin Chu
July 25, 2005


Fung Hu-hsiang, the Anwar Ibrahim of Taiwan, and his daughter, Fung Fu-hua

Question: If a government wishes to maintain a "democratic and progressive" face to the outside world, but also wishes to silence a troublesome, high-profile critic, what should it do?

Answer: It should frame him for a sex crime, of course.

Convicting a hated political enemy of a political crime elevates him to the status of a martyr. It transforms him into a hero, even a legend, among his peers. It attracts additional supporters to his cause. Demands for his release become a rallying cry for the political opposition.

Successfully framing one's political enemy of a sex crime, on the other hand, reduces him to the level of a pervert. It transforms him to a social pariah, even among his staunchest political allies. It deprives him of political and even moral support, leaving him isolated and unable to strike back.

Society considers sex crimes especially repugnant. This makes a sex crime the ideal crime with which to frame a political enemy, while avoiding the appearance of persecuting him for political motives.

Are ruling regimes aware of this difference in public reaction? You bet they are.

Have ruling regimes taken advantage of this difference in public reaction? You bet they have.

The ruling regime in Malaysia took advantage of the public's repugnance with sex crimes five years ago, when it persecuted former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim, the most prominent critic of the Mahathir Mohamad regime. Anwar was convicted of sodomizing his male chauffeur and sentenced to nine years in prison. In 2004, a post-Mahathir court reversed the conviction and restored Anwar's innocence.

The ruling regime on Taiwan is taking advantage of the public's repugnance with sex crimes today, persecuting former vice-presidential candidate/legislator Elmer Fung Hu-hsiang, the most prominent critic of the Chen Shui-bian regime and the Lee Teng-hui regime that preceded it. Fung was convicted of raping his family's Filipino maid and sentenced to four years in prison.

Fung of course never raped anyone. The crime Fung was convicted of never happened. The only person raped during this mockery of justice was the accused, Fung Hu-hsiang. He was raped by Chen Shui-bian's kangaroo court. The illegal and illegitimate Chen Shui-bian regime framed him for a sex crime in order to exact revenge upon its most hated political enemy.

Many people have forgotten that Chen Shui-bian once served an eight month prison term for libel. Chen, you can be certain, never forgot. The man Chen libeled, the man who filed a successful libel suit against him, the man responsible for Chen doing time, was Fung Hu-hsiang. No one else has ever made Chen pay such a high price for his irresponsible behavior. Chen, as those close to him know, is not one to leave such a score unsettled.

The fact is that Fung Hu-hsiang's "rape" case should never have gone to trial, let alone concluded with a guilty verdict. The prosecution's case against Fung was a joke. Any judge in any one of the 50 states of the union would have immediately thrown it out of court for insufficient evidence, and sternly reprimanded the prosecution for wasting the court's valuable time. Taiwan alas, is not a state of the union, as much as some Taiwan independence zealots might wish it were.

Rose, the Filipina maid who originally accused Fung of raping her, later recanted her testimony, in toto. Wracked with guilt for having victimized an innocent man, she confessed that acquaintances goaded her into pointing the finger at Fung. She made this confession with legal counsel at her side. Her confession was witnessed by Philippine government officials and the Republic of China's official representative to the Philippines.

Chen Shui-bian's "Star Chamber" responded to this astonishing and unwelcome development by refusing to even acknowledge her recantation. It refused even to look into the matter. Instead, it dismissed her recantation out of hand as "hearsay evidence without legal force." After all, it already had the verdict Chen wanted. The last thing it wanted was to sift through a lot of inconvenient facts.

Often the most serious obstacle standing in the way of understanding a foreign country is not what one doesn't know, but "what one knows that just ain't so." This is especially true of Taiwan. Many westerners genuinely believe that Taiwan is a democracy. Sad to say, that just ain't so.

By 1996, Taiwan had become an "elective dictatorship." By 2004, after Chen Shui-bian stole the election, Taiwan became a "non-elective dictatorship." Taiwan today is a system under the Rule of Men, not the Rule of Law. More precisely, Taiwan today is a system under the Rule of One Man, Chen Shui-bian. Taiwan's judiciary is not an independent branch of government, but the obedient tool of an Imperial Executive. The outrageous verdicts of Taiwan's courts in response to the 319 Election Lawsuits have borne that out. So has the outrageous verdict of Taiwan's court in the Fung Hu-hsiang "rape" case.

The internal affairs of sovereign and independent foreign nations are normally not the concern of the US government. The Chen Shui-bian regime however, is an exception. The Chen regime, like the regime of the Shah of Iran, is a client of the United States. Republic of China citizens on Taiwan voted the Chen regime out of office in 2004 by a 53 to 47% margin. The Chen regime remains in office only because the Bush II administration rubber-stamped Chen's "re-election" and strong-armed the actual winners Lien Chan and James Soong into accepting the Chen regime's illegal power grab. As such, the United States government, the "World's Champion of Human Rights," bears a grave moral responsibility to right the wrongs inflicted by the Chen regime upon its own citizens.

A good place to begin would be righting the wrong done to the principled and courageous opposition leader Fung Hu-hsiang, the Anwar Ibrahim of Taiwan.