Freezing Point, Dead But Not Forgot

“I actually only did not think that human rights ought to segregate according to political position.  The Nationalists, the Communists, the Democratic Progressive Party, any fucking party … if human dignity is not your core value and if you permit human rights to be determined by those in power, then you are just someone that I despise.  You do not intimidate me.” – Lung Yingtai, Taipei City Minister of Culture/Freezing Point Essayist

This was a quote poached from EastSouthWestNorth’s recent post Li Datong: “It’s Lung Ying-tai again, f**k!”. This woman is my new personal hero. I had read her “The Taiwan That You May Not Know About” essay (again, in translation via ESWN) last year, but until reading this most recent entry I didn’t fully understand its importance.

This latest essay, written by Li Datong, the former editor of the now defunct Freezing Point, puts Lung’s contributions (though for only a limited time) to China’s mainland media in a historic perspective. The door of free flowing information opened for a moment there last year … it was quickly slammed shut, but it gave a lot of people a peek behind it. And now that some people have seen what’s there, it’s going to be harder to keep it closed.

Lung Yingtai, you’re one cool chick in my books.

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