On the 36th anniversary of the lifting of martial law, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday spoke of learning from the past to achieve reconciliation while visiting a former military prison in New Taipei City’s Sindian District (新店) where many political prisoners were incarcerated under martial law.
The former prison is now the Sindian Drug Abuser Treatment Center managed by the Ministry of Justice.
Tsai said the site was used for a long time as a military prison and is among Taiwan’s 42 “Historical Sites of Injustice.”
Photo: CNA
Lei Chen (雷震), a political activist and publisher of the influential Free China (自由中國) magazine in the 1950s, was incarcerated at the prison, as well as Huang Hsin-chieh (黃信介), Yao Chia-wen (姚嘉文) and Chang Chun-hung (張俊宏), leaders of Taiwan’s early democracy movement who were imprisoned in the 1979 Formosa Incident, Tsai said.
“These Taiwanese democracy pioneers were incarcerated here, but they never wavered and did not submit to the authoritarian regime, despite having to endure much suffering,” Tsai said.
“The Historic Sites of Injustice aim to remind people of our shared past, as well as the need to safeguard the democracy and freedom we enjoy today,” she added.
Tsai urged government agencies to promote transitional justice and to think of creative ideas to preserve the historic sites for educational purposes.
“This is the way to achieve justice and achieve reconciliation, for Taiwan to emerge from the dark shadows of the past,” she said.
Taiwan would work to become “the beacon of democracy and human rights” in Asia, Premier Chen Chien-jen (陳建仁) said at the event.
“Taiwan’s freedom, democracy, and rule of law all came from the sacrifices and relentless struggle of the early democracy activists,” he said. “Therefore our government must promote transitional justice.”
The government would preserve historical documents and political files, and work to identify the perpetrators of historic atrocities, he added.
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