Starting at noon today there will be a special procession of people holding chrysanthemums in the streets around central Taipei to remember the victims of the 228 Incident. Similar processions will be held in other cities and counties nationwide. These are intended to express the profound sentiment felt by the public for those who perished. The lessons that can be learned from this terrible time have to be passed on.
The end of World War II meant that the people of Taiwan were finally free from half a century of Japanese colonialist rule. The US handed responsibility for the protection of the island over to the Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek (
But not even two years had elapsed before this administration dispatched a military force to engage in a campaign of indiscriminate, then calculated, slaughter. The Nationalist troops set about systematically eliminating the local elite. Thousands of respected Taiwanese met their end over this period. Many of their bodies were never found.
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government used savage terror tactics to consolidate its power for five decades. No one dared to openly discuss the 228 Incident until the late 1980s. The government didn't hold an official inquiry into the incident until former president Lee Teng-hui (
However, the government has consistently failed to come clean about who ordered the slaughter and who the butchers were who carried out these acts with such impunity.
Last week Academia Historica President Chang Yen-hsien (
However, this report has no legal standing. It is not an official report and the government has not sought to have its findings confirmed by legal proceedings or by an official investigation committee. So the victims may have been identified, but the perpetrators have not been held to account.
What have we learned from this incident? Lin I-hsiung (
Faced with volatile cross-strait relations, many Taiwanese argue this nation depends on China to thrive. They are apparently able to delude themselves that despite Beijing's despotic and bloody record, it is able and willing to respect the principles of freedom, democracy and the rule of law.
The Taiwanese have already suffered tremendously as a result of such misconceptions. While commemorating the 228 victims, we must seek to ensure that we shall never suffer another similar tragedy and educate those who are disdainful or ignorant of history, particularly our legislators.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) has caused havoc with his attempts to overturn the democratic and constitutional order in the legislature. If we look at this devolution from the context of a transition to democracy from authoritarianism in a culturally Chinese sense — that of zhonghua (中華) — then we are playing witness to a servile spirit from a millennia-old form of totalitarianism that is intent on damaging the nation’s hard-won democracy. This servile spirit is ingrained in Chinese culture. About a century ago, Chinese satirist and author Lu Xun (魯迅) saw through the servile nature of
In their New York Times bestseller How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt said that democracies today “may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders. Many government efforts to subvert democracy are ‘legal,’ in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy — making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process.” Moreover, the two authors observe that those who denounce such legal threats to democracy are often “dismissed as exaggerating or
Monday was the 37th anniversary of former president Chiang Ching-kuo’s (蔣經國) death. Chiang — a son of former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), who had implemented party-state rule and martial law in Taiwan — has a complicated legacy. Whether one looks at his time in power in a positive or negative light depends very much on who they are, and what their relationship with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is. Although toward the end of his life Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law and steered Taiwan onto the path of democratization, these changes were forced upon him by internal and external pressures,
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus in the Legislative Yuan has made an internal decision to freeze NT$1.8 billion (US$54.7 million) of the indigenous submarine project’s NT$2 billion budget. This means that up to 90 percent of the budget cannot be utilized. It would only be accessible if the legislature agrees to lift the freeze sometime in the future. However, for Taiwan to construct its own submarines, it must rely on foreign support for several key pieces of equipment and technology. These foreign supporters would also be forced to endure significant pressure, infiltration and influence from Beijing. In other words,
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