A Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislator has proposed a bill that seeks to extend a degree of legal responsibility for the 228 Incident and the White Terror to the spouse, direct descendants and other relatives of suspects.
The proposal is ridiculous, both in political terms and for the fact that it would constitute bad law.
The proposal seems to want to mobilize support from the most steadfast supporters of the pan-green camp.
Using historical atrocities to strengthen the pro-Taiwan vote has worked before, and rightly so, because the pan-blue camp has never offered genuine contrition for the pillaging and abuses its political forefathers committed against Taiwanese people.
With this obnoxious and juridically ignorant suggestion, however, the DPP seems to be either running out of viable strategies or else the ability to keep its small minority of feral members in line -- all at the worst possible time.
Some Taiwanese regard the 228 Incident as a symbol of ongoing injustice and many -- for very good reason -- bear a grudge against the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), whose soldiers and agencies have killed so many innocent people and tormented so many others.
The problem is that almost all of the identifiable perpetrators have died of old age. What should be pursued and discussed now is historical and institutional responsibility, not launching some flaccid attack on relatives for events of which the great majority are either ignorant or cannot recall.
DPP Legislator Wang Sing-nan (
This is disingenuous. The law already provides for witnesses to be called to testify if they have first-hand knowledge of a crime.
Forcing relatives of the accused to act as proxy for the accused would be unprecedented. This would not only hurt the nation's reputation but also its human rights environment.
The era of deifying Chiang Kai-shek (
However, to hunt down the families of anyone accused only creates another injustice. Truth and justice is, we can only hope, the common goal of the nation, but over-emphasizing the incident or demeaning the victims of KMT abuses by drawing up hare-brained legislation to increase a party's electoral chances is wholly inappropriate.
Politically, the DPP, by not pulling this bill and disciplining Wang for his strategic ineptitude, has given the KMT a big boost, allowing KMT hardliners to prey on the vicious stereotype of independence advocates as extremists and autocrats-in-waiting.
Wang, for his part, seems to be mostly interested in preaching to the converted to beef up the legislator-at-large vote. But the potential damage that this kind of dumb, gratuitously confrontational politicking can wreak on DPP candidates in marginal seats cannot be underestimated. Except, perhaps, by clueless DPP strategists.
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
I have heard people equate the government’s stance on resisting forced unification with China or the conditional reinstatement of the military court system with the rise of the Nazis before World War II. The comparison is absurd. There is no meaningful parallel between the government and Nazi Germany, nor does such a mindset exist within the general public in Taiwan. It is important to remember that the German public bore some responsibility for the horrors of the Holocaust. Post-World War II Germany’s transitional justice efforts were rooted in a national reckoning and introspection. Many Jews were sent to concentration camps not
RSS