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Foundation keeps memory of the 228 Incident alive

Lee Wang-tai, executive director of the Cabinet's ad hoc Memorial Foundation of the 228 Incident. PHOTO: GEORGE TSORNG, TAIPEI TIMES

As the first appointed executive director of the Cabinet's ad hoc Memorial Foundation of the 228 Incident (二二八事件紀念基金會) since the peaceful transfer of power in 2000, Lee Wang-tai (李旺臺) knows first-hand about the true feelings of the victims' families of the notorious incident.

Three or four times a week, Lee visits victims' families across the nation to show them how the DPP-led government identifies with their pain and how it cares about the loss of their loved ones.

"I feel like a nurse healing the wounds of the injured," said Lee sitting in his ninth-floor downtown Taipei office. "I remember vividly the frightening look on the face of one of the old ladies whom I visited in Tainan County. She thought I was someone from the Investigation Bureau or National Security Bureau to question her about the 228 Incident."

After he managed to gain her trust, the woman burst into tears and started to tell him how much she and her family had suffered over the years after the death of her husband, who was executed because of his involvement in community patrols.

"She and her family had literally lived an isolated life for more than half a decade because not a single member of her relatives dared to have any contact with her," Lee said. "In addition to the constant visits of the police and investigators, they were blacklisted and banned from going abroad or having any possible job promotion."

Mission of the foundation

Visiting victims' families is just part of the 16-member foundation's mission. Issuing compensation is another.

According to the statistics made available by the foundation, it has distributed over NT$6.6 billion to nearly 1,900 victims' families since its establishment in 1995.

As of July 29, the foundation has received 2,334 compensation claims, 1,892 of which have successfully been paid while 334 were denied because of insufficient evidence.

"The lack of official documents and eye witnesses has made the identification process difficult," Lee said. "Sometimes we have to turn down a claim just because one or two small pieces of evidence are missing, although we're 90 percent sure about the reliability of their stories."

According to Lee, about a quarter of the claims filed are denied because of insufficient evidence.

To help tackle the problem, President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) has asked the Cabinet's Research, Development and Evaluation Commission to establish a task force dedicated to collecting government documents from regional government offices.

With the some 60,000 government documents collected so far, the foundation has paid compensation to half of the victims' families whose claims had earlier been denied.

Nevertheless, there are a lot more people out there who are eligible for the claims but fail to file them.

"Some have emigrated to foreign countries and know nothing about the claims and others refuse to file the claims because they don't want to collect the money which they said is an exchange for the lives of their loved ones," he said.

The amount of compensation for a victim's family ranges between NT$6 million for a victim who is dead or missing and NT$600,000 for those receiving six months' imprisonment.

The application deadline is October this year.

Establishment of the foundation

When Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) was the president, the Executive Yuan set up a task force in 1990 to invite scholars and experts to study the incident. After one year of intensive research and interviews, the task force made public a 500-page report on the incident.

In 1995, the government erected a monument in the 228 Peace Park in Taipei City. Lee also signed a law requesting the Executive Yuan to set up the Memorial Foundation of the 228 Incident to deal with the compensation and consolation of the victims' families. The foundation also conducts studies, collects related documents on the incident and organizes events.

Among the foundation's 22-member board of directors, seven are government officials, seven are from victims' families, and eight are academics and experts.

To help the public remember the tragic incident, the foundation spends between NT$6 million and NT$7 million a year to hold events and organize activities.

"The 228 Memorial Day has become more and more important because it's the only national holiday commemorating a local historic event," Lee said.

During KMT rule, all of the national holidays were created in remembrance of Chinese historic events. The brainwashing scheme gradually collapsed after the lifting of martial law in 1987.

"It's definitely insufficient for Chen to advocate the `one country on each side' of the Taiwan Strait and Lee to promote the `state to state' theory, while the rest of society identify themselves more with China than with Taiwan," Lee said. "Taiwan desperately needs something that will hold them together as firmly as the root of a tree."

The incident

Although it may seem that the government has been doing a lot for the victims' families, they have endured much to have come this far.

The 228 Incident was a military crackdown on civilian protests that broke out on Feb. 28, 1947, against the KMT administration. Historians estimate that around 30,000 people were killed.

It originated from a female cigarette vendor who illegally sold cigarettes to make ends meet. While confiscating smuggled cigarettes on Yen-ping North Road in Taipei City, the Tobacco Monopoly Bureau injured her and mistakenly killed a bystander.

Crowds demonstrated in protest, demanding punishment of the killers. They were, however, met with gunfire, igniting a fury of widespread public protest across the island. To resolve the conflict, Chen Yi -- then chief executive officer of the Taiwan Provincial Government -- requested military assistance from Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, who later dispatched military troops to Taiwan.

As tens of thousands were either killed, injured or went missing within months of the crackdown, residents of Keelung, Taipei, Chiayi and Kaohsiung suffered the greatest losses.

Although the provincial government offered compensation after the incident, it benefited only those civil servants or schoolteachers killed, injured or suffered property damages.

"It didn't make sense at all because it offered compensation to perpetrators instead of victims," Lee said. "The amount of compensation was outrageous -- NT$200,000 for someone's death, equivalent to NT$10 million nowadays."

The government did not apologize to victims' families until Lee came to power in 1988. Although Chen had also apologized on behalf of the government, some relatives still could not forgive because surviving perpetrators of the oppression remain unknown and silent.

Others also urged the government to amend school textbooks -- which remain tainted by KMT efforts to gloss over the event -- to reflect the facts of the incident.

In a bid to promote ethnic integration, Premier Yu Shyi-kun has also announced that Feb. 28 is a national holiday.

The date was proclaimed an optional day off last year, but on the condition that organizations observing it work the following Saturday instead.

Influence on the DPP

If the 228 Incident has any influence at all on the DPP, it is the "32 requests" made by then-influential social elite after the incident.

They called on the KMT-controlled Taiwan Provincial Government to hold popular elections for regional government officials; respect the freedom of congregation, speech, publication and strike; and hire Taiwanese as heads of state-run enterprises, district court directors, chief prosecutors and other judicial personnel.

The "32 requests" are considered the fundamental spirit of Taiwan's democratic movements including the tangwai movement initiated by daring dissidents before the DPP was formed in 1986.

Following the 228 Incident was the White Terror era in which thousands of Taiwan's most prominent citizens and leading intellectuals were dragged from their homes and killed or vanished without explanation.

During the subsequent half century, private citizens have maintained a discreet silence, not daring to mention the taboo subject of the incident.

The situation did not improve until the tangwai movement emerged. The tangwai movement gradually gained steam after Lee came to power in 1988.
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