– 19th Century French liberal Frederic Bastiat, on how to set up a (religious) autocracy (Economic Sophisms, p 315)
You're a lawyer who relays to the public a message from your client. He says he thinks his prosecution is politically motivated.
Whoa, just hold on there, hoss! Taiwan's KMT now has a name for your tabooed thoughtcrime: Defamation of the judiciary:
The Ministry of Justice has asked the Taipei District Court and Taipei Bar Association to investigate whether former president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) lawyer has violated the lawyer code of ethics by conveying his client’s messages to the outside world during Chen’s detention.
Claiming Cheng Wen-long’s (鄭文龍) statements have been political in nature and defamatory to the judiciary, the Ministry of Justice said on Monday night that it had sent a letter to the Taipei District Court and the Taipei Bar Association, asking if Cheng had violated the lawyer code of ethics. [emphasis added]
[…]
Cheng also issued a 10-point statement on behalf of Chen denouncing "the death of the judiciary."
Interestingly enough, the KMT had a much more relaxed opinion about this unpardonable crime when IT was the party out of power. For the last 8 years, the KMT used to ALSO accuse the judiciary of partisan partiality when their party members sometimes received unfavorable rulings.
The response to these accusations, was entirely different however. The Ministry of Justice under the former administration NEVER initiated legal proceedings against KMT men who complained of political intereference with the courts. Because the former administration had a sense of political liberality that is entirely lacking among the authoritarians of Taiwan's Chinese Nationalist Party.
Here though, the KMT is not entirely to blame. Candidate Ma Ying-jeou quite clearly spoke of his admiration for the illiberal Singaporean model of "democracy" prior to the presidential elections — and the Taiwanese public, willingly and of their own volition, elected him president anyway.
Welcome to the land of lawlessness, then. A curious land where a crime is a crime . . . or it may not be one at all. It all depends upon the political affiliation of the perpetrator.
Postscript: Here's an example of the only kind of free speech Taiwan's Chinese Nationalist Party REALLY wants to see. From the Onion News Network:
"When you go to the court, you see a lot of guilty people on trial. Some are guilty of small crimes like parking tickets. Some are guilty of big crimes like questioning the authority of our magnanimous leaders.
Some of the guilty people say they aren't guilty.
Ridiculous!
If they were not guilty, why would our infallible government have said they were? It makes no sense!"
(They really get the Andy Rooney "voice" down. While I'm tempted to show this to some of my Taiwanese friends, they probably don't know who Andy Rooney is, so they might not get the humor.)