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LETTER: Lessons from 228

Two years ago this week, I was at Taipei's 228 Museum preparing my radio program for Radio Taiwan International (formerly the Central Broadcasting System of China). The museum building had originally housed the Taiwan Broadcasting Company that had been set up by the Japanese, but was taken over by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) when Taiwan was "handed over" to Chiang Kai-shek's (蔣介石) Republic of China.

As I looked at the displays, I thought: "How ironic that I am now working for what once had been Chiang Kai-shek's Ministry of Truth," which years later was now trying to be a voice of the people.

As I walked through the museum, the stories I had read about "the incident" came to life through the photographs, drawings and eyewitness accounts of the scuffle that grew into a massacre. I was haunted by the voices, now preserved in digital audio, of those involved in the conflict:

First there were the excited, desperate voices of young Taiwanese. On the day the massacre began, they took over radio stations to send their message of distress to the world. They told the world of the drama unfolding on the streets of Taipei -- and called on their countrymen around Taiwan to protest the violence.

Then came the stern, authoritarian voices of the military rulers. In firm, measured tones, they announced the government's response to the crisis and warned people to stay home and behave.

As I looked and listened, I heard another voice in my head: the voice of a friend who clearly considered herself to be more Chinese than Taiwanese.

A few days earlier, she had told me: "Taiwanese don't want democracy. They want to be protected -- to be rich and to be protected."

At the time, all I could say was: "Protected from whom?"

The KMT's answer has always been that it was protecting Taiwan from "communist insurgents" from "the Mainland."

Indeed, "protecting Taiwan from the communists" was, from the beginning, Chiang's excuse for the 1947 massacre that by government estimates resulted in between 18,000 and 28,000 people killed during the weeks and months that followed the protests and riots on Feb. 28.

Chiang's son and heir, Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國), used this same rationale to defend the KMT's decades-long reign of terror that saw the disappearance, imprisonment, torture and execution of thousands more.

And it was the explanation I always heard from KMT supporters every time the subject of Chiang Kai-shek came up in conversation: Chiang was protecting Taiwan. This was always followed by the argument that: "You do not understand Chinese affairs because you are not Chinese."

This non-explanation was the same one used by KMT chairman Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) when he was grilled on the BBC program Hard Talk. Not surprising, since Ma himself was Chiang Ching-kuo's English translator.

So perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised when I read a recent news story about Chiang Ching-kuo's son, John Chiang (蔣孝嚴), who seems pathologically addicted to defending the honor of the father who didn't seem to want him and the grandfather whose attitude toward him was even worse.

John Chiang has again lost his libel lawsuit against former Democratic Progressive Party chairman Yu Shyi-kun. John Chiang had filed the lawsuit after Yu said that Chiang Kai-shek was the "culprit" behind the 228 Incident.

The paper that published the story correctly noted that Chiang Kai-shek had "fled to Taiwan after losing a civil war to Mao Zedong's [毛澤東] communists in China."

But the pro-KMT paper couldn't leave it there. It had to add that Chiang Kai-shek "is remembered by some as the man who laid the foundation for the island's economic prosperity and safeguarded it from Chinese invasion."

Well, no doubt he is remembered that way by John Chiang, Lien Chan (連戰), James Soong (宋楚瑜), and heir-apparent Ma.

But to anyone who bothers to learn about Taiwanese history, three things are abundantly clear:

The first is that it was the Japanese who -- in their 50-year occupation of Taiwan -- developed Taiwan's economy and civil society to a level unimagined in China.

The second is that the only things Chiang Kai-shek safeguarded Taiwan from was the prosperity delivered by the Japanese and the democracy dreamed of by Sun Yat-sen (孫中山).

And finally, there is only one thing the people of Taiwan -- whether they call themselves "Taiwanese" or "Chinese" or "Aboriginal" -- ever needed to be protected from: Chiang Kai-shek and the KMT's reign of terror.

Stephen Nelson

Toronto, Canada
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