A Hundred Percent Freedom

At dawn on April 7, 1989, in the offices of Freedom Era Weekly on Minquan East Road in Taipei, a fire offered as a sacrifice of life suddenly engulfed the editor-in-chief's room. When riot police broke down the door, they were met not by a suspect surrendering, but by raging flames and a body that had immolated itself to affirm a conviction. That year, Cheng Nan-jung was forty-one. In the most resolute way imaginable, he proclaimed to an island still bound by the shackles of speech his belief in "one hundred percent freedom of expression."

Cheng Nan-jung, a second-generation mainlander born in Yilan and raised in Taipei, was deeply steeped in liberal thought. After Taiwan lifted martial law, the forbidden zones of speech seemed to loosen, yet hidden reefs lay everywhere. In 1984 he founded Freedom Era Weekly under the creed of "fighting for one hundred percent freedom of expression." Amid the regime's bans and suspension orders, he pressed on relentlessly: he applied in advance for dozens of magazine licenses, and each time one publication was banned he immediately revived another under a new license — waging a near-tragic, ceaseless struggle against the vast machinery of censorship.

In late 1988, Cheng published in his magazine a Draft Constitution for a Republic of Taiwan — an act that, at the time, trampled upon the most sensitive red line of the authoritarian order. The authorities promptly issued a summons charging him with suspected "sedition." But Cheng refused to recognize the jurisdiction of what he regarded as an illegitimate regime, declaring publicly: "The Kuomintang cannot arrest me; they can only seize my corpse." From that moment he locked himself inside the editor's room, beginning a self-imposed confinement that lasted seventy-one days. He prepared gasoline within the room and, in the most uncompromising posture, awaited the inevitable hour of confrontation.

On April 7, the police at last launched their forced arrest. The instant the officers tried to break through the door, Cheng ignited the gasoline he had long prepared, fulfilling in the flames his vow to "fight for one hundred percent freedom of expression." He made a torch of his own flesh, illuminating the dark corners of an age without free speech. This self-immolation, which shook the entire island, allowed countless once-silent people to feel for the first time, with such piercing clarity, just how heavy the price of freedom could be.

Cheng's sacrifice did not end there. On the day of his funeral, another democratic fighter, Chan Yi-hua, set himself ablaze before the procession of mourners, answering the unfinished ideal with his own life. Two pillars of fire seared the conscience of an entire society and branded the words "freedom of expression" indelibly into the history of Taiwan's democratization. The rulers might ban a magazine or arrest an editor, but they could never extinguish the longing for freedom in the human heart.

To understand why Cheng Nan-jung was willing to go to his death in so resolute a manner, one must recall the real predicament of speech in that era. Although the lifting of martial law ended thirty-eight years of military rule, Article 100 of the Criminal Code — the crime of "sedition by speech" — still hung overhead, and anyone who advocated Taiwanese independence or criticized the national system could at any moment be thrown into prison. The towering legal wall the authorities had built in the name of "sedition" made the very words "freedom of expression" a luxury and a danger. Cheng saw through it clearly: he knew that if he surrendered and entered that judicial process, it would be tantamount to acknowledging the authoritarian system's right to sit in judgment over thought. And so he chose the destruction of his own body to utterly repudiate this unjust order, posing to all of society in the most extreme way the question: do human beings have the right to speak the truth free from the rule of fear?

His death was like a blade tempered in flame, cutting through the numbness and silence that Taiwanese society had long maintained toward political taboo. After his self-immolation, the calls to abolish Article 100 of the Criminal Code grew ever louder, and people from all walks of life began to confront the fundamental value of freedom of speech and thought. After several years of advocacy and struggle, Article 100 was finally amended in 1992, so that pure speech and thought would no longer constitute the crime of sedition. The difficult question Cheng had posed with his life at last received an institutional answer through the efforts of those who came after him.

With the passing of years, the scorched editor's room has been preserved intact as the Cheng Nan-jung Memorial Museum. The burn marks on its walls and the twisted iron window grilles speak silently of that morning of martyrdom. April 7, the day he died, was later designated as Taiwan's Freedom of Speech Day, reminding every generation that our power today to speak our minds, to criticize freely, and to debate openly without fear of prison is no gift fallen from the sky. When we raise our voices today online, in the streets, and in the chambers of government, that undying flame still seems to burn in the depths of history, reminding future generations that Taiwan's freedom of speech is an eternal lamp that men like Cheng Nan-jung and Chan Yi-hua were willing to fuel with their own flesh and blood — lit and guarded for the generations to come.