Five days before the administration of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) abruptly changed the name of National Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall back to “Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall,” the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) held a ceremony in memory of the victims of the 228 Incident and the White Terror at Liberty Square in front of the edifice to commemorate the 22nd anniversary of the lifting of martial law.
Hundreds of victims of political persecution and their families attended the memorial. Seeing their old and weak figures in front of the structure that again serves as a memorial for the prime culprit behind a past dictatorship, I felt extremely saddened. I cannot but ask how we can strive for democracy and freedom while extolling autocracy, and how we can solemnly pay tribute to the dead on the one hand while shedding tears for a slaughterer on the other?
We must speak out. If you weep before the alter of this culprit, it is tantamount to flogging his victims and rubbing salt in the wounds of their families and society in general. If you wish to maintain this memorial hall for a dictator using taxpayers’ money and public resources, then this would be a betrayal of democratic politics and a most ruthless trampling on the value of human rights.
The biggest lesson we learned from World War II was the cost of brutality and cruelty, but what frightened humankind the most was the Holocaust. At about the same time, Asia witnessed the regrettable and painful Nanking Massacre. While the Holocaust highlighted the value of the life of a human being and the existence of universal values, the Nanking Massacre continues to be interpreted from a nationalist perspective with little regard to the sacredness of life and human dignity.
Ultra-nationalism has therefore relegated the memory of massacres carried out by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) to oblivion. We must realize that it is this process that turns ordinary people into accomplices of a dictator’s purges and the revisiting of genocide.
Although the number of people massacred by the CCP and the KMT is much higher than those who died in the Japanese invasion of China, the Chinese-speaking world continues to fail to reflect on this. In addition, the KMT and the CCP have avoided facing up to their histories of dictatorship. Thus, Mao Zedong (毛澤東) and Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) remain the celebrated founding fathers of their parties and national heroes, while those who were killed at the time have been forgotten and disappeared quietly from history.
The late human rights activist Bo Yang (柏楊) wrote a poem for the Weeping Tablet (垂�? on Green Island, which reads: “How many mothers have wept long nights for their imprisoned children on Green Island?”
The KMT and the CCP now seek reconciliation and are working together to eradicate their histories of purges and massacres. To the families of victims of political persecution, talks between the KMT and the CCP and cross-strait exchanges are like a black curtain covering the blue sky of freedom. Taiwanese and Chinese worry that they may end up like the Israelites who wandered through Babylon.
I oppose commemorating dictators. We embrace freedom and democracy. This is our commitment to both our ancestors and our descendants. The restoration of the name of the dictator to the memorial hall cannot be recognized by a democratic society, while those responsible for the restoration will be remembered forever for their actions.
Tsai Ing-wen is chairperson of the Democratic Progressive Party.
TRANSLATED BY TED YANG
Weeks into the craze, nobody quite knows what to make of the OpenClaw mania sweeping China, marked by viral photos of retirees lining up for installation events and users gathering in red claw hats. The queues and cosplay inspired by the “raising a lobster” trend make for irresistible China clickbait. However, the West is fixating on the least important part of the story. As a consumer craze, OpenClaw — the AI agent designed to do tasks on a user’s behalf — would likely burn out. Without some developer background, it is too glitchy and technically awkward for true mainstream adoption,
On Monday, the day before Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) departed on her visit to China, the party released a promotional video titled “Only with peace can we ‘lie flat’” to highlight its desire to have peace across the Taiwan Strait. However, its use of the expression “lie flat” (tang ping, 躺平) drew sarcastic comments, with critics saying it sounded as if the party was “bowing down” to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Amid the controversy over the opposition parties blocking proposed defense budgets, Cheng departed for China after receiving an invitation from the CCP, with a meeting with
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) is leading a delegation to China through Sunday. She is expected to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Beijing tomorrow. That date coincides with the anniversary of the signing of the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA), which marked a cornerstone of Taiwan-US relations. Staging their meeting on this date makes it clear that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) intends to challenge the US and demonstrate its “authority” over Taiwan. Since the US severed official diplomatic relations with Taiwan in 1979, it has relied on the TRA as a legal basis for all
A delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) officials led by Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) is to travel to China tomorrow for a six-day visit to Jiangsu, Shanghai and Beijing, which might end with a meeting between Cheng and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). The trip was announced by Xinhua news agency on Monday last week, which cited China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) Director Song Tao (宋濤) as saying that Cheng has repeatedly expressed willingness to visit China, and that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee and Xi have extended an invitation. Although some people have been speculating about a potential Xi-Cheng
RSS