Student activist Dai Lin (林冠華) is to be posthumously commemorated in the “Taiwanese Pantheon (台灣神)” in a park owned by the Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation, foundation spokesperson Liau Kian-tshiau (廖建超) said yesterday.
Lin, who was a second-year student at the continuing studies division of the New Taipei Municipal Juang Jing Vocational High School, was found dead on July 30 in an apparent suicide at his family’s residence in New Taipei City. As a former member of the Northern Taiwan Anti-Curriculum Changes Alliance, Lin’s suicide is believed to be a protest against the Ministry of Education’s controversial adjustments to high-school curriculum guidelines.
Lin will be honored by a monument in the Tati Foundation’s Taiwan Holy Mountain Ecological Educational Park in Caotun Township (草屯), Nantou County, which is to be unveiled on Sept. 26, Liau said.
Lin is the eighth activist to have a monument erected in his honor in the park, Liau said.
The foundation has invited pro-democracy and pro-independence luminaries such as historian and martial-rule era revolutionary Su Beng (史明) and historian and former minister of education Tu Cheng-shen (杜正勝) to the unveiling ceremony, Liau said.
Lin’s name will be inscribed on the park’s wall of memorial, which bears the names of others such as Lin Mao-seng (林茂生), Cheng Cheng-po (陳澄波) and Lei Chen (雷震), intellectuals who were executed, imprisoned or otherwise persecuted in the past.
Liau said that the young activist had “sacrificed his life for a righteous cause,” and was “a pioneer” in the movement against the “Chinese colonialist textbook guidelines,” making him an “exemplary figure” the Taiwanese Pantheon was established to celebrate.
“Dai Lin had inspired many more young students to learn authentic Taiwanese history, geography and its pluralistic culture,” Liau said.
The monument will be erected on Democracy Square in the center of Taiwan Holy Mountain park, and is to incorporate a sand-blasted photographic portrait of Lin, Liau said.
Other people of note who are to attend the ceremony include former Democratic Progressive Party legislator Tien Tsai-ting (田再庭) and former representative to Japan Koh Se-kai (許世楷).
Liau said the Formosa Song (福爾摩沙頌) and Island’s Sunrise (島嶼天光), songs that have seemingly become anthems of Taiwan’s protest movements, will be sung at the ceremony.
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