Fighting for Freedom of Speech for Decades, But Completely Forgotten Overnight

  Fighting for Freedom of Speech for Decades, But Completely Forgotten Overnight

United Daily News Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

June 11, 2018

 Translation of an Excerpt

DPP legislator Chiu Chih-wei and a dozen or so colleagues introduced a bill to amend the law, proposing to add the offense of “spreading fake news” to the Social Order Maintenance Act, which would be penalized by detention for no than three days or fined no more than NT$30,000. This move was immediately lambasted by scholars, who believed that such wanton criminalization of citizens was not only “Fascist” in style, but also would easily constitute an infringement on freedom of speech, which is a retrogressive approach. In Taiwan, the progression of fighting for freedom of speech was extremely arduous; now the DPP forgot it overnight, to the utter regret and lament of the public.

The reason for the DPP wanting to legislate “to combat fake news” was principally because its recent governance was ineffectual so that all kinds of detrimental negative information, coming in droves, made it difficult for the Tsai government to cope; for this reason, it attempted to adopt iron-fisted penalties to deter this trend. First we must ask: What is spreading "fake news" or "fake information"? Who is going to discern the truthfulness or falsity of the information? Who is going to determine if this information would be "enough to affect public peace and order”? In this era of the robust rise of the Internet, the public, through mobile phones or computers, retransmit information transmitted by others, God knows how often, the purpose of which is but for social intercourse or exchange of information. In as much as most people are not professional journalists, they do not have adequate channels to verify the truthfulness or veracity of this information. To ask the general public to bear criminal accountability for spreading fake news would be an extremely stringent demand!

This time, DPP legislators have proposed to amend the law, putting their fingers on the Social Order Maintenance Act, but also expanded the target to citizens in general spreading “fake news.” Thus, it would be tantamount to maximizing, in an instant, a thousand times a massive net for control of speech, as if spreading a massive net of law waiting for the public to fall in. If this amendment were adopted, it would not only make Taiwan into a "police state," but, moreover, make the people’s efforts for the past decades in pursuing freedom of speech retrogress to the dark ages. At that time, no matter how many more detention centers the government builds, we are afraid, it would not be enough to house the common folks who should violate the law.

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