The lies perpetuated by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) about the 228 Incident must be exposed and the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) innocence restored, deep-blue KMT supporters said yesterday.
The supporters set up an exhibition of historical data that it said would exonerate the KMT, while the Blue Sky Action Alliance is planning another event today to counter the DPP’s commemoration events.
The Incident refers to the killing of a cigarette vendor on Feb. 27, 1947, which led to an uprising that was violently suppressed by the KMT government. The resulting crackdown led to nearly four decades of martial law.
The Incident is a minor law-enforcement matter blown out of proportion by DPP propaganda, alliance convener Wu Chih-chang (武之璋) said, adding that the KMT’s silence has only encouraged such lies.
The party should fight back, as there is a plethora of historical data that could shed light on the “truth” of the Incident, Wu added.
The veracity of the claims that a massacre occurred on Feb. 28, 1947, should be doubted, former KMT Central Policy Committee director Alex Tsai (蔡正元) said.
No media — including the large numbers of foreign reporters present at the time — have been able to provide photographic evidence, Tsai said.
“Two hundred thousand is a lot of people to be killed, [and if they were deposited into mass graves], they should have been dug up by now,” he said, adding that the KMT should “man up” and call the DPP out on its lies.
In a book he is writing that he plans to name The History of Taiwan Island (台灣島史記), Tsai writes that Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) did nothing wrong and should be treated fairly.
Tsai dismissed claims made by Academia Historica director Wu Mi-cha (吳密察) in his new book International View of the 228 Incident (解密，國際檔案的二 二 八事件), that the KMT used exploding bullets to attack protesters.
Such equipment was relatively advanced at the time, and the KMT did not have the ability to make the bullets, Tsai said, claiming that they belonged to the Japanese, and only Taiwanese soldiers drafted to serve in the Japanese Imperial Army would have had access to them.
The KMT’s policy of not publicizing data on the event and simply apologizing cannot be condoned, Chunghwa Pan-Blue Alliance convener Lin Chung-shan (林忠山) said.
Twenty-four Republican members of the US House of Representatives yesterday introduced a concurrent resolution calling on the US government to abolish the “one China” policy and restore formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan. Led by US representatives Tom Tiffany and Scott Perry, the resolution calls for not only re-establishing formal relations, but also urges the US Trade Representative to negotiate a free-trade agreement (FTA) with Taiwan and for US officials to advocate for Taiwan’s full membership in the UN and other international organizations. In a news release announcing the resolution, Tiffany, who represents a Wisconsin district, called the “one China” policy “outdated, counterproductive
ON PAROLE: The 73-year-old suspect has a criminal record of rape committed when he was serving in the military, as well as robbery and theft, police said The Kaohsiung District Court yesterday approved the detention of a 73-year-old man for allegedly murdering three women. The suspect, surnamed Chang (張), was arrested on Wednesday evening in connection with the death of a 71-year-old woman surnamed Chao (趙). The Kaohsiung City Police Department yesterday also unveiled the identities of two other possible victims in the serial killing case, a 75-year-old woman surnamed Huang (黃), the suspect’s sister-in-law, and a 75-year-old woman surnamed Chang (張), who is not related to the suspect. The case came to light when Chao disappeared after taking the suspect back to his residence on Sunday. Police, upon reviewing CCTV
Johanne Liou (劉喬安), a Taiwanese woman who shot to unwanted fame during the Sunflower movement protests in 2014, was arrested in Boston last month amid US President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigrants, the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) said yesterday. The arrest of Liou was first made public on the official Web site of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Tuesday. ICE said Liou was apprehended for overstaying her visa. The Boston Field Office’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) had arrested Liou, a “fugitive, criminal alien wanted for embezzlement, fraud and drug crimes in Taiwan,” ICE said. Liou was taken into custody
TRUMP ERA: The change has sparked speculation on whether it was related to the new US president’s plan to dismiss more than 1,000 Joe Biden-era appointees The US government has declined to comment on a post that indicated the departure of Laura Rosenberger as chair of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT). Neither the US Department of State nor the AIT has responded to the Central News Agency’s questions on the matter, after Rosenberger was listed as a former chair on the AIT’s official Web site, with her tenure marked as 2023 to this year. US officials have said previously that they usually do not comment on personnel changes within the government. Rosenberger was appointed head of the AIT in 2023, during the administration of former US president Joe
RSS