The brutal murders of Carnegie Mellon University associate professor Chen Wen-chen (陳文成) in 1981 and of former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) chairman Lin I-hsiung's (林義雄) family members in 1980 have aroused debate again.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has promised that he will open up new investigations into these unsolved cases if he is elected president, while blaming the DPP for doing nothing about the cases during the seven years it has been in power. However, Ma's claims are not true.
From my personal experience I know that the DPP government has spared no efforts in its attempts to collect evidence over the past seven years in the hope that the truth would be uncovered and justice brought to the victims' families.
After assuming the chairmanship of the Cabinet's Research, Development and Evaluation Commission (RDEC) on May 20, 2000, I immediately instructed the Preparatory Office of the National Archives Administration (NAA) -- which was officially established in October of the following year -- to form a task force of academics and NAA staff members divided into several sub groups to collect documentation related to the 228 Incident, the Kaohsiung Incident and other unsolved political crimes of the authoritarian era, including the Chen and Lin cases.
A total of 53,000 documents were collected related to the 228 Incident, but they were still incomplete because so many years had passed and many of the victims had not been officially tried in court.
Despite that, we could still see that when Executive Administrator Chen Yi (陳儀) came to Taiwan he monopolized power over the military government, plundered the public and deprived them of their political rights. Some of the documents show how badly the KMT government treated the Taiwanese people, including Taiwanese, called banshan, who had moved to China during the Japanese colonial period and had returned together with the KMT. Some of the documents, however, did not coincide with the truth.
For instance, the dean of the College of Liberal Arts at National Taiwan University, Lin Mao-sheng (林茂生), was recorded as serving a four-year jail sentence in Tainan, when in fact he had been murdered. Academics wrote articles based on these documents and the "Tahsi Files" that were uncovered.
We also collected 10,000 documents related to the Kaohsiung Incident that described how prisoners made confessions against their will and emotional pleas in military court. These showed how the KMT authorities sharpened their swords prior to the incident and how they spied on prisoners' families and foreign journalists after the incident. Unfortunately, there weren't any documents saying whether or not president Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) had a hand in any of the cases.
We also collected many documents from the White Terror era. Many of these were in the Chen Wen-chen Memorial Foundation's touring exhibition early this year and were given to the NAA by the Ministry of National Defense. Dictator Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) would act as judge and jury, signing the death sentences. Pictures of the victims before and after their execution had to be submitted to Chiang.
Since the police authorities said the investigations into Chen's and Lin's cases have never been closed, the files were not transferred. I have personally inquired with the police authorities and they have indicated that the files are limited. President Chen Shui-bian (
The National Archives Act (國家檔案法), passed in 1999, regulates the NAA. During the four years I served as chairman of the RDEC, I adhered to the principle that the archives are public assets. Taiwan's transition from an authoritarian regime to a democracy and the truth about many historical incidents could be highlighted through these archives and maybe even help bring about transitional justice.
Unfortunately, the national archives are incomplete when relating to political events, including the murders of Chen and Lin's family members. Even officials at the NAA are unable to access these documents. The NAA does not have the power to force the KMT to submit all documents and is therefore unable to remedy the Act's shortcomings. However, during the three years and six months since I left, the NAA should have gathered even more material relating to political incidents. The Cabinet should demand that these be made public.
Lin Chia-cheng is a minister in the Examination Yuan.
Translated by Ted Yang
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