Democracy should not be used against democracy, President William Lai (賴清德) said during a visit to the national archives on Commemoration Day of the Lifting of Martial Law yesterday.
Lai and Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) visited the National Archives Administration and its reading center to review declassified records from the 228 Incident and the Martial Law era, including documents promulgated by the then-government under the National Security Act During the Period of National Mobilization for Suppression of the Communist Rebellion.
Lai said that as Tainan mayor in 2014, he observed the anniversary of the death of Tang Te-chang (湯德章), a martyr of democracy in the 228 Incident, on Tainan’s Justice and Courage Memorial Day.
Photo: CNA
The archives are a record of the authoritarian government persecuting Taiwanese and also the legacies of those affected during the struggle for democracy, he said.
The archives should appeal to the public to visit, so they could understand that the nation’s democracy would not have existed without the sacrifices made by tens of thousands of their predecessors, he added.
Lai said the martial arts novel The Legend of the Condor Heroes (射鵰英雄傳) written by late novelist Jin Yong (金庸) is one of his favorite books and it was banned during the Martial Law era.
The novel was prohibited as the government did not want Taiwanese reading stories about gallant people rising up against corruption, agency research fellow Hsu Feng-yuan (許峰源) said, adding that censorship adversely affected people’s lives.
The declassification rate of the archives has reached 99.96 percent with only 26 documents still classified, while information originally approved for permanent classification that has yet to be transferred amounts to 4,556 documents from eight cases, National Archives Administration Director-General Lin Chiu-yen (林秋燕) said in her briefing.
The agency has requested a review of the declassification and downgrading of classified records by Aug. 27, she added.
Records deemed to contain national security information should be declassified after a maximum of 40 years, with only three exceptions — if declassification could imperil intelligence agents who have collected information against China, could seriously impact national security or external relations, or could jeopardize intelligence collection against China, Lin said.
Extension to the classification period of these exceptions must be submitted to a national security meeting for approval with a maximum of three years for each extension, she said.
Cho in his speech said that Taiwan has built a democratic system after the world’s second-longest martial law of the modern era.
Declassification of the records is so the nation can be honest with historical facts and be accountable to those affected and their families, he said.
To remember history is not to remember hatred, but to prevent history from repeating itself, Cho said, citing prestigious Czech novelist Milan Kundera: “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.”
Separately, the military honor guards performed their first guard mounting at Democracy Boulevard in Taipei yesterday, after ceasing their 44-year sentry duty at the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall at 5pm on Sunday.
The Ministry of Culture said the sentries were removed to fulfill transitional justice.
Super Typhoon Kong-rey is the largest cyclone to impact Taiwan in 27 years, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said today. Kong-rey’s radius of maximum wind (RMW) — the distance between the center of a cyclone and its band of strongest winds — has expanded to 320km, CWA forecaster Chang Chun-yao (張竣堯) said. The last time a typhoon of comparable strength with an RMW larger than 300km made landfall in Taiwan was Typhoon Herb in 1996, he said. Herb made landfall between Keelung and Suao (蘇澳) in Yilan County with an RMW of 350km, Chang said. The weather station in Alishan (阿里山) recorded 1.09m of
NO WORK, CLASS: President William Lai urged people in the eastern, southern and northern parts of the country to be on alert, with Typhoon Kong-rey approaching Typhoon Kong-rey is expected to make landfall on Taiwan’s east coast today, with work and classes canceled nationwide. Packing gusts of nearly 300kph, the storm yesterday intensified into a typhoon and was expected to gain even more strength before hitting Taitung County, the US Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center said. The storm is forecast to cross Taiwan’s south, enter the Taiwan Strait and head toward China, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The CWA labeled the storm a “strong typhoon,” the most powerful on its scale. Up to 1.2m of rainfall was expected in mountainous areas of eastern Taiwan and destructive winds are likely
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday at 5:30pm issued a sea warning for Typhoon Kong-rey as the storm drew closer to the east coast. As of 8pm yesterday, the storm was 670km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻) and traveling northwest at 12kph to 16kph. It was packing maximum sustained winds of 162kph and gusts of up to 198kph, the CWA said. A land warning might be issued this morning for the storm, which is expected to have the strongest impact on Taiwan from tonight to early Friday morning, the agency said. Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼) and Green Island (綠島) canceled classes and work
KONG-REY: A woman was killed in a vehicle hit by a tree, while 205 people were injured as the storm moved across the nation and entered the Taiwan Strait Typhoon Kong-rey slammed into Taiwan yesterday as one of the biggest storms to hit the nation in decades, whipping up 10m waves, triggering floods and claiming at least one life. Kong-rey made landfall in Taitung County’s Chenggong Township (成功) at 1:40pm, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The typhoon — the first in Taiwan’s history to make landfall after mid-October — was moving north-northwest at 21kph when it hit land, CWA data showed. The fast-moving storm was packing maximum sustained winds of 184kph, with gusts of up to 227kph, CWA data showed. It was the same strength as Typhoon Gaemi, which was the most
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