Protesters yesterday rallied outside the Taipei Military Police Station over the military police’s controversial seizure of White Terror-era documents from the residence of a civilian surnamed Wei (魏), an action leaders said represented a “return to White Terror era authoritarianism.”
About 30 Free Taiwan Party supporters gathered outside the station to denounce the military police and the Ministry of National Defense (MND) for seizing the declassified documents during a search conducted without a warrant.
They held up banners which said: “Deplorable actions by military police,” “refuse Waffen-SS troops” and “Give us transitional justice,” then set fire to a military police uniform and ghost money at the entrance to the station.
Photo: Lo Pei-der, Taipei Times
The protesters issued a statement demanding Minister of National Defense Kao Kuang-chi’s (高廣圻) resignation and called for a thorough judicial investigation into which officials were responsible.
They also demanded a law be implemented to oversee the public disclosure of all White Terror era documents.
Led by Free Taiwan Party member Lin Yu-lun (林于倫), protesters tossed bundles of ghost money and photocopies of search warrants onto the fire, and put a pu-erh tea cake on the station’s front desk.
“The military police pretended to buy pu-erh tea to trick the owner of three documents into meeting with them and then went with him to his house. As enforcer troops for the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), these military police thought they could enter a civilian’s house without a search warrant,” Lin said.
“This case showed that ‘poisons’ left over from past KMT authoritarian regimes still pervade the government and the military. We see top echelons of the military establishment continuing to act as if Taiwan was still under martial law. They used military force to subvert the law and to destroy evidence which recorded their atrocities and criminal actions,” Lin said.
In related news, Democratic Progressive Party Legislators Lo Chih-cheng (羅致政), Wang Ting-yu (王定宇) and Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁) yesterday proposed that a legislative taskforce be set up to probe the matter.
“MND officials keep on changing their stories every day, and we doubt the veracity of their report. So the legislature must be proactive in conducting its own investigation... We want to know if the MND has formed a special unit for checking what historical documents civilians hold, when it was formed, how many military officials were involved and how they carried out their activities,” Lo said.
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