How does the joke go? A friend is someone who's always there to help you; a true friend is someone who will stick around afterwards to help bury the bodies.
By that measure, Taiwan's KMT must now be counted as a true friend of the Communist Party of China:
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus [on May 2nd] blocked a legislative resolution that would have asked the UN and international human-rights groups to investigate China's persecution of Falun Gong practitioners.
[...]
According to the Taiwan Falun Dafa Association, China has stepped up persecution of Falun Gong members, imprisoning them in concentration camps -- including one in Liaoning Province where some are said to have had organs removed for transplant.
I'm SO disillusioned. The China Post has written countless editorials extolling the KMT's love of sweet veritas. President Chen beat the KMT in an election after being shot. Give us the truth, the China Post repeatedly states - we have to know how Chen orchestrated the assassination attempt on his own life in order to win crucial sympathy votes!
But now, despite that kind of idealistic commitment to the truth, the KMT helps the CCP bury corpses. Say it ain't so! Someone wants to look into whether the Communists murdered members of a religious minority and harvested their organs? Why, a trivial little matter like that, and the KMT's appetite for investigations vanishes. Let's just quietly kill this in committee instead, they whisper.
What's remarkable about the entire affair is that even members from the People First Party (a heavily pro-Communist political group) were in favor of the measure. Their allies in the KMT would have nothing of it, however. An investigation like that would destroy all of the KMT's hard work to cozy up to the Communists. An investigation like that would look bad when China makes a grab for a seat on the UN Human Rights Council. An investigation like that would make the Taiwanese reluctant to hitch their wagon to China's star.
Dare I also point out that shining light on the subject might also reduce the available supply of fresh kidneys, hearts and corneas for members of Taiwan's KMT? Maybe it's just a coincidence that a large number of them happen to be a tad on the geriatric side.
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