The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) must face the mistakes it made during the White Terror era with honesty and humility, KMT Chairman Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) said yesterday, as he became the first KMT chairman to visit the National Human Rights Museum in New Taipei City.
The museum, inaugurated in 2018, has two campuses in New Taipei City’s Jingmei District (景美) and on Green Island (綠島).
Chiang made the trip to commemorate International Human Rights Day, as well as the 41st anniversary of the Kaohsiung Incident — also known as the Formosa Incident — when the then-KMT government cracked down on a demonstration organized by Formosa Magazine, leading to the arrest of many prominent democracy activists.
Photo: Weng Yu-huang, Taipei Times
Museum director Chen Chun-hung (陳俊宏) accompanied the chairman as he toured the courtroom where Kaohsiung Incident detainees were tried.
Photographs of people who would become Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) leaders standing trial dotted the walls, including photographs of former DPP chairmen Huang Hsin-chieh (黃信介) and Shih Ming-te (施明德), and Control Yuan President Chen Chu (陳菊).
Chiang also visited the museum’s wall of plaques memorializing victims of political persecution, where he lingered over the name of his great uncle, Chiang Han-chin (江漢津).
Photo: Weng Yu-huang, Taipei Times
Many people were persecuted for speaking freely during the White Terror, even someone from his own family, he said.
Chiang Han-chin, his grandfather’s cousin, was imprisoned from 1950 to 1975 before passing away in 1993, he said.
Seeing his name on the plaque filled him with grief and regret, and taught him an important lesson, Johnny Chiang said.
The chairman said he came to the museum to witness and reflect on this period in the nation’s past.
“History cannot be forgotten,” he said, adding that transitional justice depends upon truth, consolation and reconciliation.
The KMT has an obligation to be humble and reflective for the sake of the families of victims of political persecution, he said.
All information related to the White Terror era must be declassified and the truth revealed, as only then can reconciliation follow, he added.
“There is no history that cannot be declassified, no truth that cannot be revealed,” Johnny Chiang said.
These martyrs sacrificed themselves and their families to craft Taiwan’s democracy, he said.
It is from this stage in history that Taiwan’s flourishing democracy emerged, Johnny Chiang said, adding that he visited to reflect on this past and cherish the free and open society Taiwan now enjoys.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods