The Transitional Justice Commission is to investigate military detention and discipline centers established during the Martial Law era, as part of a plan to conserve the negative heritage sites and establish historical truth, a commission member said yesterday.
The commission has received a list of 45 negative heritage sites compiled by the Ministry of Culture and some sites are military compounds that the National Human Rights Museum’s investigators could not reach, the member said on condition of anonymity.
After visiting the Ministry of National Defense and establishing a communication channel with ministry officials, the commission is to thoroughly probe such military sites, the member said.
It would first target the 45 sites to which access was denied by the ministry before the Act on Promoting Transitional Justice (促進轉型正義條例) was passed last year, the member said, adding that the commission knows that the total number of such sites is far greater than that.
The ministry’s former establishments, including the National Security Bureau, the Military Police Command’s military detention center, as well as other detention centers run by the navy and the air force, are also among the commission’s targets for investigation, the member said.
The nation’s largest negative heritage site is the former Production and Education Experiment Institute in what is now New Taipei City’s Tucheng District (土城), a concentration camp where political prisoners underwent re-education, which was in 1972 renamed as the Taiwan Renai Education Experiment Institute, the member added.
Presidential Office Secretary-General Chen Chu (陳菊) served a prison term of six years and two months at the institute, where former vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮), late political activist Fu Cheng (傅正), writer Li Ao (李敖) and former legislator Lu Hsiu-yi (盧修一) were also imprisoned.
The commission should also establish the truth about the Shizilin Commercial Building (獅子林大樓) in Taipei’s Ximending (西門町), which was transformed from a Japanese temple into a detention center where political prisoners were kept during the Martial Law era, said Tsai Kuan-yu (蔡寬裕), honorary director of the Taiwan Association for the Care of the Victims of Political Persecution.
Whether to build monuments or museums to conserve the sites would be decided after the commission concludes its investigation, the member added.
The coast guard drove away 567 Chinese boats and seized seven illegally operating in Taiwanese waters in the first six months of this year, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said yesterday. They mostly operated near Kinmen and Penghu counties, resulting in fines totaling NT$1.7 million (US$52,440), it said. Three ships — two near Kinmen County and one near Penghu County — were detained in January for illegally crossing the border, while one ship each was detained near Kinmen in February and Penghu in March respectively, it said. The ship seized near Penghu in January was the Yun Ao (雲澳), detained by the CGA’s
The entire Alishan Forest Railway line is to reopen for the first time in 15 years on Saturday, with tickets to go on sale at 2pm today. The historic railway from Chiayi to Alishan (阿里山) is finally set to reopen after the completion of the final No. 42 tunnel, Alishan Forest Railway and Cultural Heritage Office Deputy Director-General Chou Heng-kai (周恆凱) said. It is to run on a new timetable, with four trains daily, he said. The 9am train is to depart from Chiayi Railway Station bound for Shizilu Station (十字路), while the 10am train departing from Chiayi is to go all the
FLU CONTINUES: Hospitals reported 101,091 visits for flu-like illnesses last week, while 68 severe cases and 16 flu-related deaths were also reported, the CDC said The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported 932 hospitalizations due to COVID-19 and 64 related deaths for last week, adding that the number of people who had contracted new SARS-CoV-2 subvariants KP.2 and LB.1 has increased. The number of people hospitalized due to COVID-19 increased from 815 in the previous week to 932 last week, while 90 percent of the 64 deceased were aged 65 or older, CDC physician Lin Yung-ching (林詠青) said. JN.1 was still the dominant variant among local and imported cases in the past four weeks, while KP.2 was the second-most common, Lin said. Cases with the LB.1 subvariant
Beijing’s recent provocative actions against the Philippines in the South China Sea were partly meant as a “dress rehearsal” for the invasion of Taiwan, former US deputy national security advisor Matt Pottinger said at a Heritage Foundation forum in Washington on Tuesday. Beijing’s blocking of a Philippine resupply mission on June 17 with unprecedented violence had multiple implications. “What they’re doing is trying to demonstrate that they can blockade, create a sense of futility and discredit the idea that the United States is going to help not only the Philippines, but by extension Taiwan,” Pottinger said. Pottinger was referring to a clash