Sounds like Scott might be in the crossfire...

Corbett | June 16, 2004 1:47 PM

Here's a letter that popped into my mail box via Nicole Darcy re: Scott Ezell's predicament in Taitung.

This kind of stuff used to happen all the time 16 years ago, and then occasionally since then, and was usually spurred by a local musican who lost a gig to a foreigner, or was jealous/upset when a foreign musician had a hottie on his arm, then called the cops or worse, the local musician's union, or when one club was terrorizing another club who was doing better business, and called the cops to hassle the club owner because he had foreigners onstage. A couple of times it was a politician who needed some face time on TV (there was this one time when all these TV cameras and a legislator walked into the Hyatt to arrest the criminal jazz players playing Misty on the second floor lounge) to get elected to office or prove some point about protecting local labor laws. The point is: the reason for these things are never what they usually seem.

After reading Scott's situation, sounds like his police nemesis has a personal gripe -- $$, face, spurned love, or some version of a CCSR (Complex Chinese Social Relationship) issue with the cafe Scott is playing at. It could even be that someone's brother-in-law makes a good cappuccino and wants to get into the cafe business in the exact same spot where this cafe happens to be, but the lady owner doesn't want to move...

This sounds like a situation that can only be solved with a few bottles of Gaoliang and some face time arranged through some local big boys who are related to Mr. Nemesis.

The letter:

On June 3, my employer, Taiwan Colors Music, received notification from the Labor Bureau that my work permit had been cancelled and that I had to leave Taiwan within 14 days. This was unanticipated and shocking. But it was also the culmination of a program of systematic harassment carried out against me by the Taitung police, despite the facts that I have been a legal working resident since 1999 and that I have not been charged with any crime.

The trouble began on April 8 when the Taitung County Culture Bureau sponsored a press conference to publicize a performance series I've been part of (I've both performed in and helped book other artists for the Dulan Organic Music Series, held in a cafe 20km north of Taitung City). The following week, after the event was reported in local media, Taitung Foreign Affairs Police officer Peter Chen called the cafe manager and threatened that, due to my participation, she was subject to an NT$150,000 fine and I was liable to deportation. Chen claimed that undercover officers had documented my involvement with video footage and photos.

County Culture Bureau Director Lin Yong-fa and the Taitung City mayor intervened on my behalf -- after all, I was unpaid, and the event benefited not only the cafe and the local community but also the bureau and the performers, for whom there is no other original music venue in Taitung.

Chen promised the officials that if I made a formal statement the case would be shelved. At the precinct office I was asked a number of questions relating to my performances without any mention of my right to remain silent or to consult a lawyer. Only when my answers were printed and handed to me did I see from the statement that I was under criminal investiga-tion, and the statement of my legal rights. I protested this omission of due process, but the officers told me I would have "big trouble" if I didn't sign the statement. I signed, but they refused to give me a copy, saying, "You read it, you signed it, you should know what's in it."

Based on that statement the Labor Bureau has convicted me in absentia of violating labor laws. They have revoked my work permit, and, thereby, my residence in Taiwan.

As a writer and musician, my life in Taitung has been far from nefarious. My last CD, Ocean Hieroglyphics, is among other things an expression of the beauty of Taitung's coast, and is distributed internationally by Wind Records. I have done a number of pro bono recordings of Aboriginal elders singing their traditional songs. I write regularly for the alternative Taipei weekly POTS, and several of my essays on the predicament of Taiwan's Aboriginals will be published in an international journal this year. Selections of my poems have recently been published in Chinese translation in Taiwan Poetics.

I am in the process of mounting an appeal. But beyond the outcome of this case, the larger issue at stake for Taiwan is that something is seriously amiss when a foreign affairs police officer baldly lies about law enforcement issues to a foreign resident. The travesty is extended further when the Labor Bureau simply takes that offi-cer's evidence as prima facie that I am a criminal, and when their first step is to revoke my working rights, and thereby my residence, in Taiwan.

Taiwan's efforts to gain a place in the international community are contravened if the police force, as an extension of political authority, uses threats and intimidation to enforce a xenophobic or ladder-climbing agenda, and if the administration does not competently process issues relating to the rights of foreign residents.

One would hope that the police and government agencies of this struggling democracy would do their utmost to support creative expression and cultural exchange, rather than undermine them through narrow-mindedness and antiquated labor laws.

Scott Ezell
Dulan, Taitung County

Category: Mr. Asia

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