It was a real victory but a bitter and incomplete one, as the National Taxation Bureau continued its persecution of Tai Ji Men.
by Willy Fautré*
*A paper presented at the webinar “13 July 2007: Who Stole Tai Ji Men’s Victory?”, organized by CESNUR and Human Rights Without Frontiers on July 13, 2024, on the 17th anniversary of Tai Ji Men’s Supreme Court victory.
The concept of victory is a complex issue, which is less easy to understand, to interpret and to ‘sell’ than it appears.
Currently, in the conflict between Ukraine and Russia, the word “victory” is often used and understood by the Ukrainians as a return to the borders that were internationally recognized before the invasion in February 2022. This objective is perceived in the European Union as impossible to be reached.
In many Western minds, freezing the Russian invasion on its current positions would be interpreted and announced as a defeat of Russia in the light of Moscow’s initial objective: the total control of the huge territory of Ukraine. The Ukrainian authorities in Kyiv would certainly have a different opinion.
From the Russian perspective, the so-called liberation of the Donbass from the so-called Nazi rule of the region by the Ukrainian authorities would be announced as a big victory which deserved a lot of sacrifices.
When there are elections in our democratic countries, it often happens that the political parties losing them mitigate their defeat or deny they really lost the game.
The outlines of the notion of victory have never been clear in history as the story of the famous ancient Greek general and statesman Pyrrhus taught us in the fourth-third century before Christ.
Pyrrhus was widely regarded by his contemporaries and modern historians alike as one of the greatest military minds of antiquity. As Rome was increasingly expanding across the Italian Peninsula, the Greek city-states got nervous about its growing threatening power. Pyrrhus, who was a second cousin of Alexander the Great and also a voracious warrior, was drawn to the conflict after diplomacy failed.
Everybody has heard of the expression “a Pyrrhic victory.” It is a victory that inflicts such a devastating toll on the victor that it is tantamount to defeat. The phrase originates from a quote of Pyrrhus of Epirus whose triumph against the Romans in several battles destroyed much of his forces, forcing the end of his campaign.
After a last battle, Pyrrhus replied to one of his commanders that hailed his victory: “If we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined.” It means they would finally be defeated. In modern language and regarding Russia’s war on Ukraine, it would be said to be a war of attrition.
There are all sorts of victories and Pyrrhic victories in conflicts.
After a failed diplomacy strategy and around ten years of defensive legal battles, the Supreme Court in Taiwan ruled in 2007 that Tai Ji Men was not guilty of tax evasion. It was experienced as a victory but it was a bitter short-lived victory because the court decision was never enforced by the NTB, the National Taxation Bureau, and because none of all the successive Ministers of Finances since 2007 has had the political courage to have it implemented by its administration. More serious is that the NTB has continued its war against Tai Ji Men in total impunity thanks to the voluntary blindness and deafness of the Taiwanese politicians in the last seventeen years.
For a time, Tai Ji Men managed to stem and slow down the NTB offensive but in 2020 some major property of Tai Ji Men was seized, unsuccessfully auctioned off, and nationalized. A theft.
The Tai Ji Men case is now a frozen conflict in which justice remains the main victim of the non-enforcement of the decision of the Supreme Court. The battle is continuing on other battlegrounds.
Willy Fautré, former chargé de mission at the Cabinet of the Belgian Ministry of Education and at the Belgian Parliament. He is the director of Human Rights Without Frontiers, an NGO based in Brussels that he founded in 1988. His organization defends human rights in general but also the rights of persons belonging to historical religions, non-traditional and new religious movements. It is apolitical and independent from any religion.
He has carried out fact-finding missions on human rights and religious freedom in more than 25 countries He is a lecturer in universities in the field of religious freedom and human rights. He has published many articles in university journals about relations between state and religions. He organizes conferences at the European Parliament, including on freedom of religion or belief in China. For years, he has developed religious freedom advocacy in European institutions, at the OSCE and at the UN.
