Malice Has No Winners: Cross-Strait Moves Viewed through the Lee Ming-che Case

 Malice Has No Winners: Cross-Strait Moves Viewed through the Lee Ming-che Case

United Daily News Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

November 28, 2017

 Translation of an Excerpt

Lee Ming-che, a former DPP party worker, yesterday was sentenced to five years in prison by a Mainland court for "subverting the political power of the state"; Lee Ming-che indicated in court that he "accepts the judgment," forsaking appeal. To this, the Presidential Office issued a statement, stressing that "proselytizing democratic ideals is no crime," and that this case seriously harmed cross-Strait relations. This rhetoric, in comparison with the statement of the Presidential Office last September when Lee Ming-che was being tried that “it would exert all efforts to let him return to Taiwan,” seems to be even more empty. In fact, the outside world could not see what efforts the government had exerted for him.

Lee Ming-che became the first Taiwan resident to be convicted and sentenced on charges of "subverting the political power of the state"; it in reality was accidental, and not inevitable. Lee Ming-che went to the Mainland using the identity of a non-governmental organization worker for many years, and nothing untoward had happened. There are two reasons why he was convicted and sentenced this time: the remote reason is that since the Tsai government came to office, cross-Strait relations have deteriorated; the most recent reason is that a Mainland student, Zhou Hongxu, was arrested in Taiwan as a communist spy; Lee Ming-che, thus, became a counterpart hostage on the other side.

In a nutshell, Lee Ming-che is a pawn sacrificed in cross-Strait wrestling. If the Bureau of Investigation under the Justice Ministry had not forcefully pushed for the "Internal Security Bill," creating atmospherics of cross-Strait espionage warfare, or had Zhou Hongxu not been arrested because of an aggressive pursuit of merit [on the part of the authorities], Lee Ming-che would still be a free person today. If President Tsai would exhibit a little vgenuine goodwill in the cross-Strait relations which are mired in an impasse, the two sides would not have engaged in a political tug of war in the cases of Lee Ming-che and Zhou Hongxu.

Lee Ming-che and Zhou Hongxu originally were not figures that could rock the big picture, yet because of the worsening relations between the governments across the Strait, they were sacrificed by both sides. We want to remind everyone: malice has no winners; if criminal justice serves politics, using people as pawns, then it is an act unbecoming of humanity, and impossible to win the hearts and minds of the people. If the Tsai government indeed wanted to help Lee Ming-che to return home, wouldn’t it know what to do?

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