Four former political prisoners yesterday shared their stories with former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) at the Green Island Human Rights Memorial Park and said that the nation’s tragic past should be remembered so that democracy and freedom could persevere.
“We came back here as winners, because they [the former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) regime] did not defeat us. They wanted us to die, but we survived,” said Kuo Chen-chun (郭振純), one of the four.
The park was originally home to two prisons built to accommodate political prisoners during the White Terror era.
Photo: CNA
The four, all “first-generation” prisoners, were kept in the prison, which jailed more than 1,300 at its peak, between the 1950s and 1960s.
Kuo was 28 years old when he was arrested in 1953 and was sentenced to 22 years for treason.
Tsai Kun-lin (蔡焜霖) was only 20 when he was accused of “associating with the communists” because one of his friends was a member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Tsai described his time in prison in a more positive tone, saying that prison “felt like a university or a graduate program” because the majority of the political prisoners on the island were from the social elite, including university professors, physicians and artists, so he had learned a lot.
Chang Chang-mei (張常美) was one of the few female political prisoners on the island.
She was an 18-year-old high-school student when she was sent to prison after a student association member accused her of being a CCP member.
Chang, who married a man who had been a political prisoner on the island after they were released, complained about the former KMT administration’s intentional neglect of the White Terror era history in school textbooks.
“Children nowadays do not know what happened because they were never taught about it,” Chang said.
Chen Meng-he (陳孟和) echoed Chang’s view, saying that although President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has apologized to former political prisoners four or five times, he still tries to find excuses for the KMT’s authoritarian past.
That is why former prisoners appreciated Lee’s 1999 apology to political prisoners and their families — the first time a president apologized on behalf of the government — said Chen, a painter who was imprisoned for 15 years.
“Taiwan was ‘silenced’ during the 38 years of martial law, with many members of the social elite wiped out or imprisoned for what they believed or even for something they had not done,” Lee said.
“That was why I had to do what I could — push for the compensation of or restoration of the reputation of [political] prisoners,” the former president added.
Lee and the former prisoners visited the memorial park, where prison buildings have been turned into exhibition spaces, and paid tribute to the hundreds of former prisoners whose names have been etched in stone.
Speaking in front of the memorial monument, Lee spoke about the “power of memory,” saying that history should not be forgotten and only by remembering its past could Taiwan find the direction to move forward.
Lee is scheduled to conclude his three-day visit to Taitung today.
TRAGEDY: An expert said that the incident was uncommon as the chance of a ground crew member being sucked into an IDF engine was ‘minuscule’ A master sergeant yesterday morning died after she was sucked into an engine during a routine inspection of a fighter jet at an air base in Taichung, the Air Force Command Headquarters said. The officer, surnamed Hu (胡), was conducting final landing checks at Ching Chuan Kang (清泉崗) Air Base when she was pulled into the jet’s engine for unknown reasons, the air force said in a news release. She was transported to a hospital for emergency treatment, but could not be revived, it said. The air force expressed its deepest sympathies over the incident, and vowed to work with authorities as they
A tourist who was struck and injured by a train in a scenic area of New Taipei City’s Pingsi District (平溪) on Monday might be fined for trespassing on the tracks, the Railway Police Bureau said yesterday. The New Taipei City Fire Department said it received a call at 4:37pm on Monday about an incident in Shifen (十分), a tourist destination on the Pingsi Railway Line. After arriving on the scene, paramedics treated a woman in her 30s for a 3cm to 5cm laceration on her head, the department said. She was taken to a hospital in Keelung, it said. Surveillance footage from a
BITTERLY COLD: The inauguration ceremony for US president-elect Donald Trump has been moved indoors due to cold weather, with the new venue lacking capacity A delegation of cross-party lawmakers from Taiwan, led by Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), for the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump, would not be able to attend the ceremony, as it is being moved indoors due to forecasts of intense cold weather in Washington tomorrow. The inauguration ceremony for Trump and US vice president-elect JD Vance is to be held inside the Capitol Rotunda, which has a capacity of about 2,000 people. A person familiar with the issue yesterday said although the outdoor inauguration ceremony has been relocated, Taiwan’s legislative delegation has decided to head off to Washington as scheduled. The delegation
Another wave of cold air would affect Taiwan starting from Friday and could evolve into a continental cold mass, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Temperatures could drop below 10°C across Taiwan on Monday and Tuesday next week, CWA forecaster Chang Chun-yao (張竣堯) said. Seasonal northeasterly winds could bring rain, he said. Meanwhile, due to the continental cold mass and radiative cooling, it would be cold in northern and northeastern Taiwan today and tomorrow, according to the CWA. From last night to this morning, temperatures could drop below 10°C in northern Taiwan, it said. A thin coat of snow
RSS