Denying justice to Tai Ji Men, as the Taichung High Administrative Court did on August 2, means that transitional justice problems have not been solved in Taiwan.
by Michele Olzi*
*A paper presented at the webinar “No Peace Without Real Justice for Tai Ji Men,” co-organized by CESNUR and Human Rights Without Frontiers on 20 September 2024, on the eve of the UN International Day of Peace.
An article already published in Bitter Winter on September 25th, 2024.
After the inauguration of the new president in May, Taiwan had the opportunity not only to have a new government, but also to fix a pending issue strictly connected to a spiritual movement that had suffered injustice there. Unfortunately, it happened otherwise.
Those familiar with the Tai Ji Men case already know the persecutions that this spiritual movement suffered from 1996. However, a brief recap of the principal elements connected to this pending issue are necessary. Tai Ji Men is a menpai (which is similar to a “school”) of self-cultivation, qigong, and martial arts. Since 1996 (nine years after the end of the Martial Law period in Taiwan), Tai Ji Men has been suffering from several persecutions by specific organs of the local government. More specifically, the movement was accused by a prosecutor of tax evasion and fraud.
These charges are linked to a peculiar aspect of Tai Ji Men tradition, which is common to all martial arts and self-cultivation groups in Taiwan. When they enter the movement, Tai Ji Men’s dizi (“disciples”) express their gratitude by giving their Shifu (“Grand Master”) red envelopes. Normally, these envelopes contain money as gifts by the disciples to their Shifu. Accordingly, the content of the red envelopes should be considered as non-taxable.
However, instigated by the prosecutor, the National Taxation Bureau (NTB) issued tax bills for the years 1991 to 1996 by claiming that the content of the red envelopes was not gifts but tuition fees for an alleged “cram school” (i.e., a school offering crash courses to prepare students for exams on different subjects). Notwithstanding the 2007 decision of the Supreme Courts, which declared Tai Ji Men defendants innocent of all charges, including tax evasion, NTB maintained the tax bills. After protracted litigation, it corrected the tax bills for all years, except 1992, to zero. For the year 1992, the NTB argued that a Supreme Administrative Court decision rendered before the Supreme Court decision of 2007 was final, and no different disposition was possible.
Although both the Supreme Court’s in 2007 and the Supreme Administrative Court in 2018, stated that Tai Ji Men is not a cram school, the NTB maintained its tax bill for 1992. This led to the seizure, unsuccessful auction, and nationalization of Tai Ji Men’s sacred land in Miaoli in 2020.
Recently, the movement offered to the Taichung High Administrative Court an alternative solution to fix the issue by filing a new lawsuit, where Tai Ji Men’s representatives asked for a refund of whatever might have been considered as payment for the fabricated 1992 tax bill. On August 2, 2024, the Taichung High Administrative Court ruled against the movement and supported previous NTB decisions.
This latter verdict—along with other factors—allows to include the Tai Ji Men case among those where transitional justice has not been enforced. According to German scholar of peace and conflict studies, Susanne Buckley-Zistel, transitional justice concerns the acknowledgement and correction of human rights violations in societies in transition (i.e., post-war, or post-dictatorship societies). On the one hand, the end of the Martial Law period in 1987—and the official proclamation of religious liberty afterwards—makes of Taiwan a peculiar example of “society in transition.” On the other hand, the persecutions that Tai Ji Men suffered since 1996 make the Tai Ji Men case a specific case of transitional justice denied.
For the sake of accuracy, the Tai Ji Men case requires a specific approach to consider both the unjust imposition of the tax bill for 1992 and the nationalization of the land in Miaoli (which was intended for a self-cultivation and educational center). According to Buckley-Zistel, there are two main approaches to transitional justice: retributive justice and restorative justice. In detail, the latter approach “does not seek to punish but to (re-)establish the relationships between victims and perpetrators (if they can be easily differentiated).” A crucial conception underlies this approach, namely “a crime is being conceived to be an offense against a person (not a law).” This implies, in turn, that some form of reconciliation must be established between victim and perpetrator.
One crucial aspect of the restorative justice—states Buckley-Zistel —is its “strongly constructivist” feature. In sum, this approach aims to create a “new social reality through the encounter of victims and perpetrators who transcends their animosity.” Therefore, to establish any form of reconciliation, an encounter between victims and perpetrators represents a necessary step. As Susanne Buckley-Zistel says, “one outcome of the encounter between victims and perpetrators is ‘the truth.’”
To do that, in several cases, peculiar organs—also known as “truth commissions” —have been established. These temporary institutions gather victims’ testimonies to document crimes and atrocities in a final report. What is crucial in the process thus is the production of “truth.” According to the South African Truth Commission, four different kinds of truths tend to emerge during the process: factual or forensic truth; personal or narrative truth; social or dialogue truth; and healing and restorative truth.
In the Tai Ji Men case, several authorities already manifested their solidarity and support. Several authorities in Taiwan had also clarified that Tai Ji Men was not a cram school and was not guilty of tax evasion, including the Supreme Court decision of 2007 that declared all members innocents of all charges. The production of truth process should focus on the main two unjust factors of the whole story: the decision to maintain the tax bill for the year 1992; and the nationalization of the sacred land in Miaoli.
Justice will be served whenever a viable, restorative truth will be offered about these two aspects of injustice. Restorative truth for Tai Ji Men means acknowledging that the 1992 tax bill was ill-founded and should be corrected to zero; and that the nationalization of the Miaoli land was based on that fabricated tax bill, with the consequence that the land should be given back to Tai Ji Men.