Taichung mayor-elect an outspoken figure on mainland’s democracy and rights campaigns
The Taichung mayor-elect has been an outspoken advocate of democracy on the mainland, with a record in activism going back to his student days
Democratic Progressive Party stalwart Lin Chia-lung, the mayor-elect who seized the long-time Kuomintang stronghold of Taichung in Saturday’s poll, has been an outspoken figure on the mainland’s democracy and rights campaigns.
While it is yet to be observed whether the former green camp legislator will take cross-strait exchanges to another level in his new role, a rights group that he co-founded with Hong Kong and Taiwan campaigners is already gearing up to expand its work to his municipality.
With his sights set on civil rights in the wider Chinese community, Lin has repeatedly spoken out on mainland human rights issues during his tenure as a lawmaker, at times such as the anniversaries of the Tiananmen crackdown and the imprisonment of Nobel peace prize laureate Liu Xiaobo.
Lin has always been supportive of overseas Chinese democracy groups ... this makes him different from many other core DPP politicians who limit their sights within Taiwan
He visited mainland civil rights activist Chen Guangcheng in the United States in 2012, and invited him to visit Taiwan in the following year.
In 2011, he co-founded the New School for Democracy with exiled mainland dissidents Wang Dan and Wang Juntao, and Hong Kong pan-democrats including the Democratic Party’s Albert Ho Chun-yan, the League of Social Democrats’ Andrew To Kwan-hang and the Civic Party’s Joseph Cheng Yu-shek.
The school positions itself as a platform for Chinese people in different parts of the world to exchange knowledge and experience about democratisation.
Wang Dan, chairman of the school, told the South China Morning Post that Lin would stay on as a director of the school after he took up the mayoral job and the school would expand its human rights campaign work to Taichung. At present it is based in Taipei and Hong Kong.
“In his policy platform, Lin Chia-lung has laid out a plan to create a hub of international NGOs in Taichung,” Wang Dan said. “We want to take part in the international exchanges on human rights issues in Taichung.”