Bo Yang
Boyang was arrested again in 1967 because of his sarcastic "unwitting" criticism of Taiwan's dictator Chiang Kai-shek and in particular a translation of a comic strip of Popeye. In the strip, Popeye and Swee'Pea have just landed on an uninhabited island. Popeye says: "You can be crown prince," to which Swee'Pea responds, "I want to be president." In the next panel, Popeye says, "Why, you little..." In the final panel, Popeye's words are too faint to be made out. Chiang was displeased because he saw this as a parody of his arrival (with a defeated army) in Taiwan, his brutal usurpation of the Presidency (a KMT competitor favored as head of government by the Truman administration was executed) and his strategy of slowly installing his son Chiang Ching-kuo as heir apparent. Boyang translated the word "fellows" as "my fellow soldiers and countrymen," a phrase used by Chiang Kai-shek. Having detained Bo Yang, the KMT's “military interrogators told him that he could be beaten to death at any time the authorities desired” when the writer refused to swallow their trumped-up charges. “Several interrogators” including Liu Chan-hua and Kao Yi-rue “played cat and mouse with him, alternating promise of immediate release with threats” and torture. In order to make him confess, they broke his leg. Western allies of the regime were not unaware of this. Shelley Rigger says that “Peng Ming-min, Bo Yang and Lei Chen” were “high-profile White Terror cases” in the 1960s but in fact, many “ of Taiwanese and Mainlanders were swept up by the White Terror, suffering imprisonment, torture, (…) execution.” The prosecutor initially sought the death sentence but due to US pressure this was reduced to twelve years in the Green Island concentration camp. From 1969 Bo Yang was incarcerated as a political prisoner (for "being a Communist agent and attacking national leaders") on Green Island for nine years. The original 12-year sentence was commuted to eight years after the death of Chiang Kai-shek in 1975. However, the government refused to release Bo Yang after his sentence expired, and released him only in 1977, giving in to pressure from international organizations such as Amnesty International. After his release, Bo Yang continued to campaign for human rights and democracy in Taiwan. Towards the end of his life Bo Yang stated in his memoirs that he did not have the slightest intention to insult Chiang Kai-shek with his "Popeye" translation. This was due to the fact that in his view objective criticism mattered whereas personal insults were irrelevant.