On World Human Rights Day, Dec. 10, a former detention center in Taipei City that jailed some 130,000 dissidents during the 38-year Martial Law era will open to the public as a human rights park.
President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), who last month renamed Jingmei Military Detention Center (景美軍事看守所) Taiwan Human Rights Jingmei park (台灣人權景美園區), will lead the opening ceremony.
Democratic Progressive Party officials applauded the move to create a symbol of the nation's progress in human rights.
The idea of turning the detention center into a park was proposed by Vice President Annette Lu (
Lu was sentenced to 12 years in prison on charges of sedition after she delivered a speech on human rights in Kaohsiung in 1979. She served nearly five-and-a-half years in prison.
When Lu was awarded the 2001 World Peace Prize by the Christian World Peace Corps Mission, she visited the detention center with representatives from the mission and was told that the military would soon demolish the buildings. Lu suggested that the government preserve the compound so that future generations would remember past atrocities.
The government decided to remodel the detention center, with the help of academics, human rights organizations and other civic groups that contributed to the project in various ways.
While there is no official death toll for political killings in the Martial Law era, Lu said that 29,000 political cases were recorded, 140,000 people jailed and at least 4,000 people killed.
In October, the Peng Foundation for Culture and Education, founded by independence activist and former presidential senior adviser Peng Ming-min (
The public park will preserve original buildings, including detention cells and a notorious military court known as the "mini court," where political prisoners were interrogated.
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