Keelung police are investigating the defacement of two statues of former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) in Zhongzheng Park with graffiti.
A city cleaning crew discovered the vandalism yesterday morning.
A statue of Chiang in a military uniform located near the entrance to Zhupu Temple was marked by the Chinese characters for “bandit,” “give back my land” and “Shame[ful] PLAY,” police said.
Photo: Lu Hsien-hsiu, Taipei Times
The statue’s face had been covered with paint and its shoes were painted red, police said.
There is reportedly a folk myth that those who wear red shoes will not be reincarnated, but a Taoist practitioner surnamed Wu (吳) said he had not heard of such a saying.
Wu said painting the statue’s shoes red was aimed at ridiculing and shaming Chiang, Wu said.
A bust of Chiang near the stairs to the Martyrs’ Shrine in the park, had the characters reading “go to hell,” “blood for blood” and “murderer” spray painted on it, police said.
The cleaning crew was making a routine round of the park when it discovered the graffiti, Keelung Public Works Bureau official Huang Yi-wei (黃毅維) said.
We have tried to wash most of the spraypaint off and have repainted parts of the statue with black paint, Huang said.
The police said that they are reviewing the CCTV footage from inside the park and the surrounding areas, adding that they have a few suspects they plan to investigate.
The bureau said the statue near the Martyrs’ Shrine was erected after the building was converted from a Japanese shrine in 1972, but it did not know when the larger statue by the Zhupu Temple had been put up.
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