Trials of political cases reached their peak in the 1950s and Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) participated in more than 4,000 of them, the Transitional Justice Commission said on Friday.
In an event showcasing the accomplishments of the commission in establishing a database of politically motivated cases, commission Chairwoman Yang Tsui (楊翠) said that 13,268 cases have so far been compiled in the database, which was launched on Feb. 26 last year.
Three former presidents were among the major decisionmakers in the cases — Chiang, Yen Chia-kan (嚴家淦) and Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) — commission data showed.
Chiang Kai-shek, who fled with his Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government to Taiwan in 1949 after being defeated by the Chinese Communist Party in the Chinese Civil War, participated in court procedures 4,101 times, the most among the major decisionmakers, the data showed.
Among those tried for political reasons during the authoritarian regimes from 1949 to 1991, 96.27 percent were male and 3.73 percent were female, the data showed.
Fifty-five percent of those brought to trial were native-born Taiwanese, while the rest were born in China, the commission said.
The youngest of the accused was 11, while the oldest was 84, it said.
Nearly 51 percent of the political cases were decided in court in the 1950s, the data showed.
A total of 1,153 of the accused were sentenced to death, 169 were given life imprisonment, 1,628 were sentenced to jail terms of 10 to 15 years, and 1,498 were given sentences of five to 10 years in jail, the data showed.
The commission event was held in the run-up to the 74th anniversary of the 228 Incident today.
The Incident refers to a protest in 1947 against the then-KMT regime and the resulting crackdown that left thousands dead, and led to nearly four decades of martial law.
Meanwhile, commission Vice Chairwoman Yeh Hung-lin (葉虹靈) said that about 25 percent of the symbols of authoritarianism have been eliminated since the commission was established in May 2018.
Most of the remaining symbols are concentrated in establishments handled by the military and the Veterans Affairs Council, making it difficult for the commission to deal with them, Yeh said.
However, she would soon meet with Minister of National Defense Chiu Kuo-cheng (邱國正) to discuss the issue, Yeh said.
Symbols of authoritarianism include statues of autocratic rulers and military rites in honor of autocratic figures, as well as structures or sites in memory of autocratic figures.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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