New Taipei: Absolute freedom of speech does not protect calls for Taiwan's elimination, President Lai Ching-te said Monday at an event to remember pro-democracy movement pioneer Nylon Cheng 36 years after Cheng's death. Taiwan today is embattled by psychological, media, and legal warfare waged by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and increasingly blatant "gray zone" activities, Lai said at a public memorial event at the Chin Pao San cemetery in New Taipei, Cheng's final resting place.
According to Focus Taiwan, last year alone, 64 Taiwanese were prosecuted for spying for the CCP, quadruple that of 2021, as stated by Lai. He emphasized that these individuals, funded by Chinese communists, collaborated with China to threaten Taiwan's democratic and free constitutional institutions. Over the past few weeks, China has also launched large-scale military exercises near Taiwan that involved its air and naval forces, trying to pressure Taiwanese into turning their backs on their homeland and abandoning freedom and democracy, Lai added.
Faced with these threats, the government will vigorously take action against anyone who works in collusion with China to advocate a military invasion of Taiwan or resort to "extreme" means to undermine democratic institutions, he stated. Similarly, the government will resolutely take action against anyone who attempts to "threaten national security and exploit freedom and diversity in Taiwan to create chaos," Lai said. He reaffirmed his mission as president to sustain the country's survival and development, safeguard hard-won democracy and freedom, and ensure that Taiwan's sovereignty will not be absorbed or encroached upon.
Lai made it clear that any initiative propagating the exploitation of the Taiwanese people's freedoms or the elimination of the Republic of China, Taiwan, is unacceptable to Taiwanese society. He stressed that absolute freedom of speech does not mean using freedom to destroy freedom. Cheng, a trailblazer in Taiwan's freedom of speech movement and a Taiwan independence advocate, had self-immolated on April 7, 1989, after facing arrest by the then-Kuomintang administration, which had charged him with sedition over an article he published in his magazine. In 2016, the Taiwanese government declared April 7 Freedom of Speech Day.
The freedom of speech issue has surfaced in recent weeks after Taiwan's National Immigration Agency revoked the residence permits of three Chinese influencers married to Taiwanese husbands who had lived in Taiwan for years. The government ordered them to leave Taiwan for advocating the military takeover of Taiwan by China, in violation of the Act Governing Relations between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area. The act states that a Chinese national "may be deported, or ordered to depart within 10 days" under circumstances including "being considered a threat to the national or social stability based on sufficient facts."