Up to 5,041 informers were active on more than 80 university campuses in 1983, when the then-Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) authoritarian regime monitored students through its Chunfeng Project (春風計畫), Investigation Bureau archives have showed.
Asked by the Transitional Justice Commission to study the about 3,000 files the bureau transferred to the National Archives Administration, former Taiwan Bar Association chairman Lin Kuo-ming (林國明) said that some incumbent lawmakers, including Democratic Progressive Party legislators Chang Liao Wan-chien (張廖萬堅) and Chung Chia-pin (鍾佳濱), had been targets of the KMT’s surveillance efforts.
The two lawmakers took part in the 1990 Wild Lily Student Movement, a pivotal moment in the nation’s democratization that resulted in the dismissal of the National Assembly and the abolition of the Temporary Provisions Effective During the Period of Communist Rebellion (動員戡亂時期臨時條款).
Once Lin’s research is completed, the commission would provide an account of the surveillance to the public, commission spokeswoman Yeh Hung-ling (葉虹靈) said.
Further investigation is needed to establish how many people the Chungfeng Project had placed under surveillance, Yeh added.
In a bid to curtail student movements, the KMT in the early 1970s integrated its educational, administrative and intelligence resources to create the project, the commission said.
In 1975, it is estimated that at least 3,900 people worked for the project on university campuses nationwide, it said.
Project personnel would meet every year on average until the KMT in 1983 instructed the Ministry of Education to convene campus stabilization meetings to strengthen surveillance on university campuses, it added.
Chang Liao said that the commission had informed the two legislators about the declassified archives, adding that he had been aware of KMT informers at university, but had not known who they were.
After browsing through the files, he had gathered some clues about one informer, who had assumed the name Chang Chien (張健) and served as an executive in the student sports club, he said.
Chang Chien had been a perpetrator and victim of the KMT’s propaganda promoting loyalty to the party and the nation, Chang Liao said, adding that it is not necessary to reveal the identity of Chang Chien, who might have reflected on his past wrongdoing.
If he was to meet Chang Chien again, he would laugh it off and give him a hug, Chang Liao said.
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