Following the decapitation of statues of former President Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) and Japanese engineer Yoichi Hatta, a Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmaker yesterday said he has drafted a bill that would repurpose the Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) Memorial Hall and relocate all the nation’s Chiang statues.
DPP Legislator Pasuya Yao (姚文智) said that he would today begin seeking endorsements from other lawmakers for the bill, which would see the abolishment of the Organization Act of National Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Management Office (國立中正紀念堂管理處組織法).
The proposal seeks to shutter the memorial hall to remove all symbols associated with Chiang and then refurbish it for other purposes, and the relocation of all Chiang statues nationwide to Chiang’s mausoleum in Taoyuan’s Dasi District (大溪).
Photo: CNA
“Statues [of Chiang] are the final remnant of the [Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)] authoritarian regime, which has to be removed if a full-fledged democracy is to be realized,” Yao said
Yao, who has also advocated the phasing out of coins featuring Chiang’s portrait, said that President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) would be blamed if the hall is not closed in the near future.
“It is the government’s fault that different groups in society have taken to engaging in vandalism,” Yao said, referring to the statue decapitations.
Hatta was a renowned civil engineer who built major irrigation systems in Taiwan during the Japanese colonial period. A statue of him was beheaded in Tainan earlier this month, allegedly by a former Taipei City councilor linked to a pro-unification group, as an act of revenge against the beheading of Chiang statues.
The vandalism has sparked a heated debate along political and ethnic lines about the legacy of the KMT government and the Japanese colonial era.
Retired army lieutenant general Wu Sz-huai (吳斯懷), who was at the center of a scandal involving retired generals participating in a political event in Beijing, said that the government’s acquiescence in the vandalizing of Chiang statues and its “honoring of Japanese” would intensify problems between ethnic groups, and “people would be prompted to vandalize totems of Japan.”
“It is because transitional justice has not been fully implemented that people are making such threats,” Yao said. “The last mile of transitional justice is the removal of authoritarian symbols. The government has to remove all those symbols to prevent conflicts.”
Meanwhile, in an apparent dig at Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), who has voiced opposition to proposals to remove Chiang symbols, Yao said there are still 47 Chiang statues in Taipei, which should be removed immediately.
Ko’s suggestion that past conflicts should be put aside in pursuit of a common future demonstrates his ignorance of history, as the commemoration of Chiang was institutionalized through abuse of power, and authoritarianism should be expunged from society, Yao said.
DISCONTENT: The CCP finds positive content about the lives of the Chinese living in Taiwan threatening, as such video could upset people in China, an expert said Chinese spouses of Taiwanese who make videos about their lives in Taiwan have been facing online threats from people in China, a source said yesterday. Some young Chinese spouses of Taiwanese make videos about their lives in Taiwan, often speaking favorably about their living conditions in the nation compared with those in China, the source said. However, the videos have caught the attention of Chinese officials, causing the spouses to come under attack by Beijing’s cyberarmy, they said. “People have been messing with the YouTube channels of these Chinese spouses and have been harassing their family members back in China,”
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday said there are four weather systems in the western Pacific, with one likely to strengthen into a tropical storm and pose a threat to Taiwan. The nascent tropical storm would be named Usagi and would be the fourth storm in the western Pacific at the moment, along with Typhoon Yinxing and tropical storms Toraji and Manyi, the CWA said. It would be the first time that four tropical cyclones exist simultaneously in November, it added. Records from the meteorology agency showed that three tropical cyclones existed concurrently in January in 1968, 1991 and 1992.
GEOPOLITICAL CONCERNS: Foreign companies such as Nissan, Volkswagen and Konica Minolta have pulled back their operations in China this year Foreign companies pulled more money from China last quarter, a sign that some investors are still pessimistic even as Beijing rolls out stimulus measures aimed at stabilizing growth. China’s direct investment liabilities in its balance of payments dropped US$8.1 billion in the third quarter, data released by the Chinese State Administration of Foreign Exchange showed on Friday. The gauge, which measures foreign direct investment (FDI) in China, was down almost US$13 billion for the first nine months of the year. Foreign investment into China has slumped in the past three years after hitting a record in 2021, a casualty of geopolitical tensions,
A registered sex offender from the US who went missing after entering Taiwan has been found and would be deported in light of the risk he poses to the public, the National Immigration Agency (NIA) said yesterday. The agency launched a search for Levi Forrest Wallace, 43, after it was informed by the American Institute of Taiwan (AIT) that he had entered Taiwan on Oct. 2 on a tourist visa. He was not on the US government’s wanted list. Wallace was sentenced to 90 days in jail with a two-year probation in 2001 after he was convicted of sexual delinquency of
RSS