In 1979, the KMT arrested the eighty-year-old Tangwai figure Yu Teng-fa. The Tangwai were not beaten down; they told those in power, in a resolute voice: “We are willing to go to prison for Taiwan’s democratic future!”
In 1979, responding to the political situation created by the severing of diplomatic relations between the United States and the Republic of China, the KMT not only suspended elections but arrested former Kaohsiung County Magistrate Yu Teng-fa. The Tangwai launched wave after wave of rescue efforts.
Under the White Terror, who dared even to say the words “human rights”? Was that not openly defying those in power? If one person is arrested, if ten are arrested, if a hundred are arrested — what if it were ten thousand?
“But what can we do? We Taiwanese, who for three hundred years have not even had the freedom to protest — what else can we do for our own fate but sigh once more? We do not want to see Yu Teng-fa grow old and die in prison, nor do we want to see Taiwan’s democratic tide crushed by brutality and violence. We would rather go to prison in place of the venerable Mr. Yu Teng-fa, and go to prison for Taiwan’s democratic and peaceful future.”
1979, First Courtroom of the Taiwan Garrison Command’s Jingmei Detention Center: the trial in the Yu Teng-fa case. Yu Teng-fa (in black suit, left) and his son Yu Jui-yen (in checked shirt, right).