ABSTRACT
On November 30, 1986, several thousand people gathered at the Taoyuan International Airport, near the Taiwanese capital city of Taipei, to welcome the unauthorized return of a dissident, Xu Xinliang, who had been exiled to the United States after the 1979 Formosa Incident. 1 They were met by fully armed police, MPs, and anti-riot tanks, standard regalia of a government crackdown on any large-scale public demonstration. In the crowd was a small group of young men, led by Wang Zhizhang, who called themselves Green Team (Lüse xiaozu), generally considered the only organized opposition media group during the martial law era. 2 Green Team recorded the Nationalist government’s heavy-handed manner of dealing with the opposition. Over the next few days, the official government-owned or - controlled media unanimously reported the scuffle as one of rioters attacking military police; Green Team’s video, however, showed the people to be the true victims of state-sponsored violence.
