The Shilin District Court yesterday dropped a case against two independence advocates for their attempt in June last year to behead a bronze statue of Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) in Yangmingshan National Park (陽明山公園).
Kuo Chih-kang (郭志剛), 67, and Lin Ting-ying (林廷穎), 23, were acquitted of all charges on account of a legal technicality.
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office indicted the two defendants on charges of damaging public property, among others, they tried to remove Chiang’s head by using an arc torch cutter on the statue’s neck.
Photo: Huang Chien-hao, Taipei Times
However, the court said that the statue was not public property as it was not officially managed by a government agency.
The statue was donated by local chapters of Lions Clubs International in 1979, but was never registered as public property by any government agency, the court said.
Kuo and Lin applied the torch cutter to the back of the statue, but were prevented from damaging the front side, so their action could be deemed an unsuccessful attempt to carry out a crime and they should be acquitted of the charges, the court said.
In interviews, Kuo said that he is the commander-in-chief of the “Taiwan Independence Revolutionary Army” (台灣獨立革命軍).
He said that he had formed a “Taiwan Nation-Building Working Team” (台灣建國工程隊) with Lin and other young activists, and they had destroyed six Chiang statues around Taiwan.
During a trial hearing in November last year, Kuo said that Chiang was a notorious dictator who was responsible for many atrocities and mass killings in Taiwan and China.
“Around the world, Chiang is counted among former leaders who were mass murderers, ranking third in total people killed under his rule,” Kuo said.
“My action should not be seen as a crime, but as performance art to highlight transitional justice,” he said. “We tried to behead Chiang’s statue to rid the nation of symbols of the authoritarian era, as many people in Taiwan still worship Chiang and maintain his cult of personality.”
In May, Kuo was sentenced to eight months in prison for taking home the head of a statue that he beheaded in April last year.
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