Let me [Jerry] pick up the story here with a partial listing of our activities during that busy week in Taiwan. Among other things, we were treated to:

• a formal banquet where each of the participants had their contributions described and received an award plaque, with many of the presenters former political prisoners;
• a luncheon celebration with several friends hosted by Peng Ming-min, who returned to Taiwan after 24 years' exile, ran unsuccessfully for President of the country but is now a Senior Advisor to President Chen Shui-bian;
• a meeting at the Presidential Palace with President Chen, followed by a banquet hosted by Vice-President Annette Lu;
• a two-day conference devoted to the guests telling their stories (simultaneous translations included) and being honored — interrupted more than once by people who had been victimized by the KMT and are still seeking justice and truth and reconciliation;
• a Human Rights concert in a large Taipei park, at which Milo and Judith were presented by Peng Ming-min and asked to speak (and were cheered exuberantly);
• three or four fetes at which we were entertained with aboriginal dances and singing, explosions of rose petals and confetti, politicians singing and playing musical instruments, small chamber orchestras, church choirs, and so on;
• a train trip to a human rights and democratization museum started by Lin Yi-hsiung, a lawyer and activist who was unjustly arrested in 1980. The museum is a memorial to his mother and twin seven-year-old daughters who were murdered — widely assumed to be by government thugs — while he was in prison. He and his wife met and spoke with us. It was incredibly moving;
• a plane trip to the south of the island and back, with bus tour stops at a dairy farm, an aboriginal village, and the home of the 1968 Little League team (mostly aboriginal tribal members) whose exploits began Taiwan's decades of dominance of the Little League World Championships — although that team didn't win the World Championship, the incorrect memories of many Taiwanese notwithstanding;
• two TV interviews for Milo and Judith, one of which was the taping of a sort of Taiwanese Charlie Rose show (only a lot more fun), in which their eldest daughter Liz also participated;
• several newspaper articles about our group, including two that focused on Milo and Judith, one in Chinese and the other in English;
• meetings with many representatives of the Presbyterian Church of Taiwan, which played a major role in the movements of the 1970s and 1980s that resulted in the current state of freedom and democracy in Taiwan. These included Reverend Kao, former Moderator of the church, who spent several years in jail. In Taiwan he is compared to Nelson Mandela because of his integrity and rectitude in prison. It is said that he was released from prison early because he kept converting his fellow prisoners and even the guards!

Judith and chldren with Peng Ming-min

Every minute of the trip for me was memorable. The highlights included: meeting people who spent years in prison, sometimes undergoing brutal torture; getting to better understand, appreciate and admire what Judith had done; seeing the love and gratitude that those prisoners have for people like Judith who helped them survive; and meeting many Americans, Canadians, Dutch and Japanese who were moved to take actions for which they were expelled from the country.

Several small incidents demonstrated the significance that the people of Taiwan attach to the history of their democratic and human rights movements: after several TV and newspaper interviews, Judith began to be recognized on the streets of Taiwan and to be thanked by groups of people. At one point our taxi driver even refused his tip when he realized who Judith was.

Just after we returned to the States, the National Archives released the verbatim transcripts of the talks between Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger and Prime Minister Chou En-lai in Beijing in 1972. It was odd to read Chou En-lai's angry accusation of U.S. complicity in the escape of Peng Ming-Min, and the U.S. denial, during which Kissinger said that he suspected the escape was the work of "American anti-Chiang Kai-shek left wing groups." Judith rejects the "left wing" characterization but proudly accepts the description of "anti-Chiang Kai-shek"!

I was saddened by my own ignorance of the modern history of Taiwan — ignorance that apparently I share with most fellow Americans. The trip gave me a new understanding of the continuing process of democratization in places like Taiwan, with its twenty-three million people trying their best to get it right.

Postscript:

I wrote the above in mid-February, 2004, a month before the Presidential elections and referendum vote that took place on March 20. As it turned out, Chen Shui-Bian and his Democratic Progressive Party were re-elected by a tiny margin — about 2/10 of one percent. The outcome was muddied the day before the election by an unsuccessful assassination attempt in which the President and his Vice President both sustained gunshot wounds.

There followed a period of unrest and protests — led by the unsuccessful candidates — that is only now subsiding. The opposition KMT and PFP parties filed lawsuits seeking a recount, annulment of the election, a new election, or even a judicial declaration that they, not the DPP, had won the election. They claimed that the assassination attempt had been staged in order to get a sympathy vote, that a national state of alert following the attempt had prevented many members of the military from voting, and that voting irregularities had caused the DPP victory.

President Chen with Milo, Judith, Jerry, et al