台灣政治人士彭明敏去世,主張台灣獨立

Peng Ming-min, Fighter for Democracy in Taiwan, Dies at 98

He endured Japanese imperial rule, a lost limb in World War II,

Chinese martial law and decades in exile to become a leading force for Taiwanese self-determination.

By Chris Horton

 



TAIPEI, Taiwan — Peng Ming-min, a victim of World War II who endured Japanese imperial rule, brutal Chinese martial law and decades of exile to become a leading fighter for democracy and self-determination for his native Taiwan, died here, the nation’s capital, on April 8. He was 98.

His death, at the Koo Foundation Sun Yat-Sen Cancer Center, was confirmed by Lee Chun-ta, director of the Peng Ming-min Foundation.

Mr. Peng pressed his case for a democratic Taiwan over the years as a lobbyist, author and academic, both in Taiwan and in exile in the United States.

As a young Japanese subject in 1945, near the end of the war, he lost his left arm during an American bombing raid on Japan. Days later, while convalescing at his brother’s home near Nagasaki, he witnessed the atomic bombing of that city by the United States.

Mr. Peng returned to Taiwan after Tokyo’s surrender ended its 50-year colonial rule of the island, with the Republic of China under Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek taking control. In 1947, he lived through what came to be known as the 228 Massacre, in which Chiang’s government executed as many as 28,000 members of the Taiwanese elite, effectively killing off a generation of leaders. Mr. Peng’s father narrowly escaped the government roundups in the southern port city of Kaohsiung.

Half a century later, in 1996, after the end of four decades of martial law under Chiang’s Chinese Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang, Mr. Peng was a candidate in Taiwan’s first direct presidential election.

In a televised debate before the election, Mr. Peng, dispensing with the customary Mandarin, memorably spoke in the Taiwanese language, which had been suppressed under martial law, as he called on the Kuomintang to take responsibility for its harsh treatment of Taiwan. Chiang’s government fled to the island in 1949 after being overthrown by Mao Zedong’s communist revolution in China.

Mr. Peng lost the election to the incumbent president, Lee Teng-hui. But his candidacy, under the banner of the Democratic Progressive Party, once outlawed but now in the majority, was a turning point in Taiwan’s democratic journey, helping to inspire a generation of Taiwanese to enter politics.

“Peng Ming-min showed Taiwanese by example that even though we had been under dictatorship for half a century, democracy was still within our reach,” said Kolas Yotaka, a spokeswoman for President Tsai Ing-wen and a former legislator. Younger generations still look to his words today, she said, as Taiwan struggles to maintain its sovereignty in the face of a growing threat from China, where the ruling Communist Party claims Taiwan as Chinese territory.

Peng Ming-min was born on Aug. 15, 1923, with the Taiwanese name Phe Beng-bin. He grew up in a doctor’s family in the central Taiwanese town of Dajia, known as Taiko during Japanese rule.

He excelled academically. After studying at Tokyo University and National Taiwan University, he obtained a master’s degree in 1953 at the McGill University Faculty of Law in Montreal. The next year he earned a doctorate in law from the University of Paris.

Information about survivors was not immediately available.

Mr. Peng’s calls for Taiwanese independence — through the removal of the Republic of China government that had dominated the Taiwanese people’s lives since 1945 — had a major impact on the politics of his country of 23 million, said James Lin, a historian of modern Taiwan at the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington in Seattle.

“Peng’s willingness to call for Taiwanese independence early on, and especially in the 1990s as part of his presidential candidacy, was a noteworthy position in Taiwanese history,” Professor Lin said. “Advocating for independence was then an uncommon position that made him a public target of a large number of Kuomintang supporters and politicians.”

The Kuomintang was not always Mr. Peng’s enemy. In the early 1960s he was chairman of the political science department at National Taiwan University. And as an early contributor to the new field of international air law, he attracted the notice of Generalissimo Chiang, who appointed him an adviser to the Republic of China’s delegation at the United Nations in New York.

The appointment caused Mr. Peng to lead what he called a “double life” — torn between his loyalty to Taiwan and his duties for the Republic of China, which claimed to be the sole legitimate government of both Taiwan and China and imposed a Chinese identity on the Taiwanese people.

In 1971, the U.N. General Assembly voted to expel “the representatives of Chiang Kai-shek” from the China seat on the Security Council. The seat was then given to the People’s Republic of China government in Beijing, setting Taiwan on a path of increasing international isolation.

By that time Mr. Peng had been blacklisted from returning to Taiwan, after a military court in 1964 convicted him of sedition over his involvement with two of his students in the printing of a manifesto calling for the overthrow of the Republic of China government and the establishment of a Taiwanese democracy. American pressure on Chiang Kai-shek to release Mr. Peng had led to his transfer from an eight-year prison sentence to house arrest in 1965. With help from Amnesty International, he escaped in 1970, fleeing to Sweden.

The United States was the next stop for Mr. Peng, who took up a professorship at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. While there, he wrote what would prove to be an influential autobiography, “A Taste of Freedom” (1972). In 1981, he co-founded the Formosan Association for Public Affairs, a lobbying group that remains active today. (Formosa is another name historically used for Taiwan.)

In November 1992, following the end of 38 years of martial law in Taiwan and the death of Chiang’s son and successor, Chiang Ching-kuo, Mr. Peng returned to Taiwan, where he was welcomed at Chiang Kai-shek International Airport by a crowd of about 1,000. He joined the Democratic Progressive Party two years later, before his failed presidential bid.

In the 2000 election, Taiwan chose the Democratic Progressive candidate Chen Shui-bian as president. He was the country’s first president who was not a member of the Kuomintang. Mr. Chen made Mr. Peng an adviser in acknowledgment of his contributions to Taiwan’s democratic struggle.

Decades earlier, as frosty relations between Washington and Beijing began to thaw under the Nixon administration, Mr. Peng had urged the world to pay attention to the concerns of the Taiwanese people.

In a 1971 opinion essay in The New York Times, he refuted China’s claim on Taiwan while arguing for closer ties across the Taiwan Strait between Beijing and Taipei.

“The Chinese,” he wrote, “must learn to distinguish ethnic origin and culture from politics and law, and to discard their archaic obsession to claim anyone of Chinese ancestry as legally Chinese, however far removed from China.”

He continued: “The real issue is not independence for Formosa but self-determination for the people there. And the Formosan people want to live in the most friendly association with the Chinese people and would spare no effort to establish the closest economic, commercial and even political ties with China.”

台灣政治人士彭明敏去世,主張台灣獨立

CHRIS HORTON
2022年4月18日

彭明敏在1995年參加台灣總統競選時發表講話。雖然沒有獲勝,但他成為候選人是台灣民主進程的一個轉折點。 ANDREW WONG/REUTERS


台灣台北——台灣政治人士彭明敏4月8日在台北逝世,享年98歲。他是第二次世界大戰的受害者,經歷過日本的帝國主義統治和中華民國的殘酷戒嚴令,並在流亡海外20多年,最終成為一名爭取民主和台灣本地人自決權的傑出鬥士。

彭明敏文教基金會辦公室主任李俊達證實了彭明敏在和信治癌中心醫院去世的消息。

多年來,在台灣以及流亡美國期間,彭明敏以遊說者、作家和學者的身份,一直為建立一個民主的台灣而努力。

1945年,第二次世界大戰快結束時,他在一次美國對日本的轟炸中失去了左臂,當時他還年輕,而且是日本臣民。幾天後,他在長崎附近哥哥的家中養傷時,目睹了美國對長崎投下的原子彈。

日本在「二戰」中投降後,結束了對台灣長達50年的殖民統治,蔣介石領導的中華民國接管台灣,彭明敏從日本回台。1947年,他經歷了後來被稱為「二二八大屠殺」的事件,蔣介石政府處死了多達2.8萬名台灣精英,實際上扼殺了一代領導人。彭明敏的父親在南部港口城市高雄僥倖躲過了政府的圍捕。

半個世紀後的1996年,國民黨解除了對台灣實施了近40年的戒嚴令後,彭明敏在台灣首次舉行的總統直接選舉中成為一名候選人。

值得注意的是,在大選前的一次電視辯論中,彭明敏摒棄了政治場合常用的國語,而用起了曾在戒嚴令下受到壓制的台語,呼籲國民黨為其對台灣的殘酷統治承擔負責。蔣介石的政府被毛澤東領導的共產主義革命推翻後,於1949年逃到台灣。

彭明敏在大選中敗給了時任總統李登輝。彭明敏當時以民進黨候選人的身份參選,那是台灣民主進程的一個轉折點,幫助激勵了一代台灣人從政。曾經非法的民進黨如今是執政的多數派。

「彭明敏用自己的榜樣向台灣人展示,儘管我們曾在獨裁統治下生活了半個世紀,但民主仍可在我們手中實現,」台灣總統蔡英文的發言人、前立法委員谷辣斯·尤達卡說。她表示,在台灣面臨著來自中國的日益增長的威脅、努力維護自己主權的時候,年輕一代如今仍從彭明敏的話中汲取力量。中國執政的共產黨稱台灣是中國領土。

彭明敏出生於1923年8月15日,他名字台語發音的英文拼寫是Phe Beng-bin。他在台灣中部大甲的一個醫生家庭長大,大甲在日據時期曾名為太鼓(Taiko)。

他學業優異。在東京帝國大學和國立台灣大學學習後,於1953年在加拿大蒙特婁的麥吉爾大學法學院獲得了法學碩士學位。次年,他獲得了巴黎大學法學博士學位。

目前尚無有關其後人的信息。

西雅圖華盛頓大學傑克遜國際研究學院從事台灣現代歷史研究的學者林於翔(James Lin)說,彭明敏想通過推翻自1945年以來一直主導台灣人民生活的中華民國政府,來實現台灣獨立,他的這個呼籲曾對有著2300萬人口、他土生土長的台灣政治有重大影響。

「彭明敏很早就願意呼籲台灣獨立,尤其是在上世紀90年代作為自己競選總統活動的一部分,這在台灣歷史上有值得注意的地位,」林於翔說。「在當時,主張獨立是一個不尋常的立場,讓他成為大批國民黨支持者和政界人士的公開攻擊目標。」

國民黨並不總是彭明敏的敵人。20世紀60年代初,他曾任國立台灣大學政治學系主任。作為國際航空法這個新領域的早期貢獻者,他引起了蔣介石的注意,蔣介石任命他為中華民國派駐紐約的聯合國代表團的顧問。

這一任命導致彭明敏過上了一段他稱之為「雙重人格的生活」,讓他在對台灣的忠誠與他對中華民國的責任之間左右為難。中華民國曾自稱是台灣和中國的唯一合法政府,並把中國人的身份強加給台灣人民。

1971年,聯合國大會投票把「蔣介石的代表」在安理會佔據的中國席位上驅逐。這個席位後來被授予北京的中華人民共和國政府,台灣從此走上了在國際上越來越受孤立的道路。

在那時候彭明敏已經被列入黑名單,被禁止返回台灣。1964年,一個軍事法庭判處彭明敏犯有煽動罪,因為他參與了他的兩名學生印製呼籲推翻中華民國政府、建立一個民主台灣宣言的活動。1965年,美國對蔣介石施壓要求釋放彭明敏後,國民黨政府把彭明敏的八年徒刑改為軟禁。1970年,他在國際特赦組織的幫助下逃到了瑞典。

美國是彭明敏的下一站,他在密西根大學安娜堡分校獲得了教授職位。在那裡,他寫下了後來產生很大影響的自傳《自由的滋味》(1972出版)。1981年,彭明敏與他人一起創立台灣人公共事務會(英文名為Formosan Association for Public Affairs,福爾摩沙[Formosa]是台灣歷史上用過的名稱 ),這個遊說團體活躍至今。

蔣介石之子、繼任者蔣經國去世後,台灣解除了實施38年的戒嚴令,彭明敏於1992年11月返回台灣,當時有近千人在中正國際機場接機。兩年後,他加入民進黨,後來在台灣總統大選中敗選。

在2000年的總統大選中,台灣選民將民進黨候選人陳水扁選為總統。他是台灣首位非國民黨成員的總統。陳水扁將彭明敏任命為資政,以感謝他為台灣民主鬥爭做出的貢獻。

早在幾十年前,華盛頓與北京的冷淡關係在尼克森政府時期開始解凍時,彭明敏就曾敦促世界關注台灣人民擔心的事情。

1971年,在《紐約時報》發表的一篇觀點文章中,他駁斥了中國對台灣的主權主張,同時也給出了北京與台北加強兩岸關係的理由。

他寫道,「中國人必須學會將民族起源和文化與政治和法律區分開來,拋棄他們早已過時的痴迷,把任何有中國血統的人宣稱為法律上的中國人,不管他們與中國的關係有多遠。」

他繼續寫道:「真正的問題不是福爾摩沙的獨立,而是當地人民的自決。福爾摩沙人民想與中國人民生活在最友好的關係之下,並將不遺餘力地與中國建立最密切的經濟和商業關係,甚至政治關係。」

https://cn.nytimes.com/obits/20220418/peng-ming-min-dead/zh-hant/

< 資料來源:The New York Times引用網址 >
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