Pai Ya-tsan

Pai Ya-tsan (Chinese: 白雅燦; pinyin: Bái Yǎcàn; born 8 January 1945) is a Taiwanese political activist. During his imprisonment, Amnesty International designated Pai a prisoner of conscience.

Raised in Changhua County, Pai studied law at National Chengchi University.[1] His political involvement began in 1969, campaigning for Huang Hsin-chieh, who won election to the Legislative Yuan.[1] Suspected of sedition, Pai was jailed for four months in 1971, then released.[1][2] In 1973, he supported a number of tangwai candidates for Taipei City Council.[1] Pai chose to contest the legislative election of 1975, but was arrested in October for distributing campaign fliers which contained 29 questions addressed to Chiang Ching-kuo, as well as political policies suggested by Pai.[2][3] The next month, he went to trial and was sentenced to life imprisonment by a military court.[4] While imprisoned he went on hunger strikes to protest foreign policies and political repression.[5][6] In February 1986, legislators Chiang Peng-chien and Fang Su-min petitioned for Pai's release.[7] Instead, Pai's prison sentence was commuted to fifteen years upon the lifting of martial law in July 1987.[8] Throughout the year, Pai's health continued to decline,[8] and he was released in April 1988.[9]

In November 2018, Pai contested the Changhua County magistracy as an independent candidate.[10]

2018 Changhua County magistrate election results[11]
No.	Candidate	Party	Votes	Percentage
1	Wei Ming-ku	Democratic Progressive Party	283,269	39.87%
2	Wang Huei-mei	Kuomintang	377,795	53.18%
3	Pai Ya-tsan	Independent	7,402	1.04%
4	Huang Wen-ling	Independent	34,690	4.88%
5	Hung Min-xiong (洪敏雄)	Independent	7,263	1.02%
Total voters			1,031,222
Valid votes			710,419
Invalid votes
Voter turnout			68.89%