The actions of the Taiwanese government towards Tai Ji Men violated both the Two Covenants it incorporated into its domestic law and basic principles of transitional justice.
by Michele Olzi*
*A paper prepared for the International Forum on World Citizenship Day, April 1, 2024, “Practicing Freedom of Religion and Human Dignity: The Human Rights Case of Tai Ji Men,” Taipei, Taiwan.
In 2009, Taiwan’s government has incorporated into its domestic legislation the two main United Nations human rights covenants, namely the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). Since then, Taiwan’s compliance with the two covenants has been periodically examined by international independent experts. Given these set of circumstances, it has been assumed that Taiwan has agreed upon respecting these UN covenants.
However, actually the Two Covenants have not always been respected by the Taiwanese government. The Tai Ji Men case is quite emblematic of this latter dynamic. In particular, the way Taiwanese government made use of its tax laws represents—as several international scholars pointed out—a violation of freedom of religion or belief (FoRB). Furthermore, the “misuse” of the tax laws against Tai Ji Men movement implies the infringement of some key articles of the Two Covenants. Both the ICCPR and the ICESCR entail freedom from discrimination—which is intimately connected to freedom of religion or belief and economic justice in the ICESCR. To be more specific, Article 3 from the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights reads: “The States Parties to the present Covenant undertake to ensure the equal right of men and women to the enjoyment of all economic, social and cultural rights set forth in the present Covenant.”
Now, since Taiwan incorporated these Two Covenants into its domestic legislation, this implies that all citizens, cultural associations, and religious groups on Taiwanese soil should benefit from the same rights. The complex historical relationship between the Taiwanese government and religious and spiritual groups tells us a different story.
I do not have the chance nor the expertise to offer a general overview of all factors and circumstances that lead to the persecution of Tai Ji Men’s movement since 1996. However, three crucial factors need to be stressed, to consider such violations of religious and economic rights. First, in 1987, the Martial Law period ended in Taiwan, and religious liberty was officially proclaimed. Second, in 2007, the criminal division of the Supreme Court of Taiwan pronounced the final acquittal of Tai Ji Men defendants, declaring them innocent of all charges (including tax evasion) and Dr. Hong and his co-defendants were compensated by national authorities for the previous wrongful detention.
Third, I assume that we are all familiar with the fact that some representatives of the National Taxation Bureau (NTB) of Taiwan ignored the Supreme Court decision and maintained an unjust tax bill for the year 1992, which was based on falsely considering the content of the “red envelopes” the dizi (“disciples”) gave to their Shifu (“Grand Master”), Dr. Hong Tao-Tze, as “tuition fees” for a non-existing “cram school.” Based on this fabricated bill, sacred land belonging to Dr. Hong and Tai Ji Men was confiscated in 2020. These three facts (i.e., the end of the Martial Law; the acquittal and national compensation of Dr. Hong; and the persecutory actions of NTB), taken together and examined in their relationships, demonstrate that there were specific violations of the Two Covenants.
Furthermore, these religious, economic, and cultural circumstances characterize Tai Ji Men’s persecution as a peculiar case of denial of “transitional justice.”
Transitional justice concerns the acknowledgement and correction of human rights violations in societies in transition (i.e., post-war, or post-dictatorship societies). To examine the specific case of societies in transition, such as Taiwan after the end of the Martial Law, in light of this kind of justice, it is necessary to consider its main normative approaches. Normally, it is possible to discern two main approaches to transitional justice: retributive justice and restorative justice. According to Susanne Buckley-Zistel, a leading scholar of peace and conflict studies, “retributive justice holds that a particular (violent) action needs to be responded to by punishment, and that this breach of a law requires the offender to suffer in return.”
The idea here is that a punishment corresponds to an offense. On the other hand, “restorative justice does not seek to punish but to (re-)establish the relationships between victims and perpetrators (if they can be easily differentiated).” Within this second approach, “a crime is being conceived to be an offense against a person (not a law)” and justice seeks a way to reconcile victim and perpetrator, as well as their rehabilitation.
Although both approaches entail specific normative aims and conjugations, these two main roads to transitional justice lead, in turn, to two structural goals for societies in transition: peace and democracy. Both goals include two categories of “ideal achievements” each: truth (i.e., truth-seeking) and justice (i.e., asserting the right to justice and rejecting impunity of those who violated human rights) on the path towards peace; reparation (i.e., providing reparation for victims) and future (i.e., providing guarantees that the abuses will not be repeated) on the path towards democracy.
According to the set of facts/circumstances that characterize the path of the Tai Ji Men movement and its persecution, I am more inclined to emphasize the category of restorative justice. Within the general framework of transitional justice, it is true that those who violated the law and persecuted Tai Ji Men have not been punished. This is, of course, unfair. However, what is most urgently needed now is restorative justice in its two pillars: reparation, meaning giving back to Tai Ji Men its due, and future, i.e., guaranteeing to Tai Ji Men the right to peacefully flourish and grow.