Shih Ming-te: Twenty-Five Years Behind Bars, He Finally Raised a Flag Against His Own Party

30-Second Overview: Shih Ming-te was imprisoned twice, serving over twenty-five years in total. After the 1979 Kaohsiung Incident, he refused to plead guilty before his military tribunal, opened his mouth to request the death penalty, and was ultimately sentenced to life imprisonment. After his release, he helped build the Democratic Progressive Party and served as party chairman from 1994 to 1996. In 2006, he launched the Million People Anti-Bian Red Shirt Movement, raising his flag against the very direction he had once fought for. On January 15, 2024 — his birthday — he died of liver cancer at the age of 83.

The First Prison Door at Twenty-One

In 1962, Shih Ming-te was arrested for participating in political organizing activities and sentenced to life imprisonment.¹ He was twenty-one years old. Taiwan was under the severe control of martial law, and the fate of political prisoners was determined by the ruler's will rather than any legal procedure.

He spent thirteen years in the prisons of Green Island and the Taiwan mainland. In 1975, following Chiang Kai-shek's death, the government announced a general amnesty, and Shih was released.² He was thirty-four years old, half of his youth already spent behind bars.

The Last Summer of the Dangwai Movement

In the late 1970s, Taiwan's dangwai (outside-the-party) movement found a relatively open space for activity, propelled by international pressure and the domestic need for reform. Shih Ming-te became a core organizer of the dangwai movement, actively connecting reform-minded individuals across the island.

In 1979, he participated in founding Formosa magazine.³ This publication, rallying around democratic reform and human rights, rapidly became the spiritual headquarters of the dangwai movement, connecting across Taiwan dissidents who had never met one another. Looking back, that summer and autumn were charged with a pre-apocalyptic undercurrent.

Kaohsiung, December 10, 1979

December 10, 1979. International Human Rights Day. Formosa magazine held a human rights rally in Kaohsiung. Crowds gathered, tensions escalated, and it ultimately devolved into a fierce confrontation between riot police and demonstrators — recorded in history as the Kaohsiung Incident.³

After the incident, Shih Ming-te disguised himself and went into hiding for weeks, but was eventually caught.¹ The KMT government launched mass arrests, prosecuting core Formosa magazine members on charges of sedition. Shih was designated the mastermind.

The Plea Written for History

On March 28, 1980, Shih Ming-te stood before the military tribunal for his final statement.

He had originally prepared a sixty-thousand-word "political testament" to read aloud in court. But just weeks earlier, Lin Yi-hsiung's family had been massacred at their home in Taipei — his mother and twin daughters killed, his wife severely wounded.⁴ Upon learning the news, Shih chose to abandon the sixty thousand words and simply said:

"Please sentence me to death! I request it! I request it!"⁵

That sixty-thousand-word statement was later published as a book, Shih Ming-te's Political Testament. In it he wrote: "I do not dare to hope for a just verdict from this worldly 'court,' but I believe without doubt: one day, the court of history will vindicate me!"⁵

The court's verdict: life imprisonment. Shih Ming-te received his second life sentence. In prison he staged hunger strikes to protest the unjust trial, and was force-fed over three thousand times.¹ In 1990, as Taiwan's political environment evolved, he was released — both imprisonments combined to over twenty-five years.¹

📝 Editorial note: Shih's "Please sentence me to death" sounds superficially like self-destruction, but in the courtroom context it was actually a refusal of the entire logic of the trial — he did not acknowledge that this court had any moral authority to "sentence" him anything. The person being judged looked down upon the court from a moral height. The Kaohsiung Incident became a pivotal turning point in Taiwan's democratic transition in no small part because of what happened in that courtroom.

Release, and the DPP's Founding Years

In 1986, while Shih was still imprisoned, the Democratic Progressive Party declared its founding — with the ban on political parties not yet lifted.⁶ After his release, he threw himself fully into building the party and served as DPP chairman from 1994 to 1996.⁶ His prestige came partly from his unimpeachable record of sacrifice, and partly from his rare fidelity to principle.

In 2000, Shih voluntarily left the DPP — not expelled, but his own choice to walk away.²

2006: He Raised the Flag Against His Own Party

In 2006, a string of corruption scandals involving DPP President Chen Shui-bian broke into the open. Shih launched the "Million People Anti-Bian Movement" in his own name, dressed in red on Ketagalan Boulevard, demanding the president's resignation.⁷ The Red Shirt Movement sustained protest on Taipei's streets for over a month and drew hundreds of thousands of supporters.

The common criticism was that he had tarnished his legacy and become a tool of the pan-blue camp. Koo Kuan-min publicly called him "a disgrace to his final years."²

There is a flaw in that criticism's logic: Shih's twenty-five years in prison were never in service of a party — they were in service of a principle: any political figure, regardless of party, who walks the path of corruption must be opposed. Once the DPP came to power and did things he found unacceptable, he opposed the DPP. The party changed positions; his logic did not.

He once articulated Taiwan's sovereignty this way: "Taiwan should be independent — and in fact has been independent for more than thirty years, under the name of the Republic of China."⁵ For him, this sovereignty did not belong to any party to defend, and did not need any party to speak for it.

Later Years: That Logic Finally Held Up

The Red Shirt Movement ended without Chen Shui-bian resigning. Shih endured years of sustained attack from DPP supporters; the labels "traitor" and "tool of the anti-independence forces" stuck to him for many years.

The conventional view is that he tarnished his legacy and became a pawn of forces opposed to Taiwan independence. But subsequent events offer another reading — in 2009, Chen Shui-bian was convicted of corruption and actually sent to prison.² The political judgment that accused the president of corruption and demanded his resignation was, in the end, confirmed at the judicial level. Shih's methods were criticized and his timing was questioned, but the core argument — "a corrupt ruler must be opposed, regardless of party" — received a strange verdict from time: his conclusion was not wrong, only his position was wrong.

Thereafter Shih gradually faded from the mainstream media spotlight. His health deteriorated year by year, though he continued to accept interviews and speak on Taiwan's sovereignty and political direction, holding fast to that standard that had never moved with party winds.

January 15, 2024

In the early hours of January 15, 2024, Shih Ming-te died of liver cancer at Taipei Veterans General Hospital at the age of 83.⁸ That day was also his birthday.

Born January 15, 1941. Died January 15, 2024.

In that statement written for history, he left these words: "Every era has its devoted contributors. The devoted always play tragic roles… The narrow mountain paths that devoted contributors have crawled through will be trodden into broad highways by those who follow. The devoted do not belong to today, but they will live in tomorrow!"⁵

In 1980, that thirty-nine-year-old man stood in the courtroom and said "Please sentence me to death." In 2024, whether those narrow paths have become broad highways, every Taiwanese person has their own answer. But he completed the journey — from birthday to birthday, a full eighty-three years.

Further reading: Kaohsiung Incident — Kaohsiung, 1979 | Million People Anti-Bian Movement | National Human Rights Museum: Kaohsiung Incident Military Trial Historical Materials

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