Fred Chin fumbles with the combination lock on an old metal gate, the bright turquoise marred by rust spots and grime. On the other side is a long dark corridor and rows of cells. It was here that Chin was detained, tried and sentenced to 12 years in an offshore jail by the totalitarian regime that ruled Taiwan for almost 40 years.
“In one-and-a-half years I left this room four times,” the now 72-year-old said, gesturing to the whitewashed walls. “Three times for court, and the last time when I was sent to Green Island (綠島). Three-hundred sixty-five days a year, 24 hours a day, the door was closed.”
Taiwan transitioned to a democracy in the late 1980s, and is now one of Asia’s freest and most vibrant, but it is still reckoning with its history — still very much in living memory — and how to remember the man who oversaw it.
Photo: Chen Yu-fu, Taipei Times
Chin is a survivor of the White Terror era, the decades of martial law under then-Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) leader Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) and his son Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國). It began in 1947 with tens of thousands of civilians massacred for protesting against his rule, following what is now known as the 228 Incident. By the time martial law ended in 1987, it was estimated that as many as 140,000 people had been imprisoned and another 3,000 to 4,000 executed for actual or perceived opposition to the KMT.
Chiang Kai-shek’s legacy is complicated. Some in Taiwan — even those who suffered directly — say he was not all bad, and that successes like leading Taiwan to prosperity, and fighting the Japanese and the Chinese communists, must be weighed against his crimes.
“A lot of Taiwanese people still pay their respect to this particular person,” Chin said. “We didn’t deny he’d done something wrong, and you can’t deny that he also has done something good.”
In 2018, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)-led government established the Transitional Justice Commission to investigate the decades of KMT acts against its people and work toward redress. A major focus of current discussions are thousands of Chiang Kai-shek statues across Taiwan, especially the nation’s biggest at the generalissimo’s eponymous memorial park in the capital, Taipei.
The 25-hectare Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall contains a huge open square, manicured gardens and two palatial performance halls, but its centerpiece is a towering monument housing a seated statue of Chiang Kai-shek more than 6m high, under guard.
In September last year, the commission formally proposed removing the giant statue, in a move “dismissing the legitimacy of the authoritarian rule and remembering historical lessons.”
However, it only fueled division. The KMT opposition — the party of Chiang Kai-shek which has taken steps to atone for its history — likened its potential destruction to the Buddhas of Bamiyan, and the DPP to the Taliban.
Some want the statue torn down, saying the reverential context is painful to the survivors and families of White Terror victims.
Others, like Chin, say to destroy it is to forget history.
“If you demolish everything, people can make no comparisons, people can’t know how or why the Taiwanese people hate him, why many people still adore him,” he said.
Yang Zhenlong (楊振隆), chief executive of the 228 Memorial Foundation, established to support victims and families, suggests adding in statues of other Taiwanese leaders, to dilute the impact. His grandfather, father and uncle were killed during the White Terror and he said the hall in its current form pains him.
However, he recognizes that it is not straightforward.
He said that by Western standards, there is no doubt Chiang Kai-shek was the symbol of authoritarianism in Taiwan, even a murderer.
“But people always fear to face the truth so they’ll find some excuse for themselves,” Yang said, while adding that the debate “isn’t a bad thing” and is an opportunity to find common ground.
One potential solution is a picturesque park surrounding Chiang Kai-shek’s mausoleum in Taoyuan, incongruously home to hundreds of stone and plaster Chiang Kai-sheks gradually relocated from across the nation. At the popular attraction, tourists amble around a lakeside path, lined with Chiang Kai-shek busts, and stop to examine groups of larger Chiang Kai-sheks, different colors and sizes, but all smiling, positioned so they appear to be chatting with each other.
National Chengchi University professor of diplomacy Huang Kwei-bo (黃奎博) said the statue should not be removed until Chiang Kai-shek’s legacy is reviewed “in a fair and balanced way.”
Huang, who is a former deputy director of the KMT, said the DPP government’s transitional justice process is overly focused on Chiang Kai-shek for “political gain.”
He questioned why Chiang Kai-shek is such a big focus of the process compared with 50 years of brutal Japanese colonial rule prior to the KMT.
Transitional Justice Commission member Yeh Hung-ling (葉虹伶) told TaiwanPlus in November that there were many ideas for what to do with the memorial hall, but “the main point is that it needs to be transformed.”
The government, which is to make a decision on the commission’s recommendation in April, does not appear to be in a hurry.
Minister of Culture Lee Yung-te (李永得) told reporters last year that “what to do with the statues isn’t the top priority.”
In the meantime, the reckoning continues. Chin now volunteers as a guide in the military court complex where he was held, converted in 1997 into the Jing-mei White Terror Memorial park and museum.
“Our dredging of our stories, publicly ... the main purpose is to let the younger generations learn from the history, so they can know what they want from the future and what, if they neglect it, could happen to them,” he said.
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