As Taiwanese readied to observe the 66th anniversary of the 228 Massacre last week, many were angered when it emerged that President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), at the behest of a descendant of a perpetrator, had sent a letter to Academia Sinica’s Institute of Modern History asking it to uncover the “real facts” behind the incident.
For critics, Ma’s request was regarded as an attempt to rewrite, possibly with the intent of whitewashing the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) responsibility, a dark, albeit defining, chapter in the nation’s history.
While further studying of the causes, impact and future consequences of the massacre and the decades of the equally murderous White Terror that ensued, should be encouraged, it is shocking that, 66 years on, people in Taiwan, including Minister of Culture Lung Ying-tai (龍應台), can still question who bears ultimate responsibility — Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), governor Chen Yi (陳儀), unruly KMT soldiers, corrupt government officials or Taiwanese “thugs” — or how many people were slain, which is proof that the story is incomplete.
There are two main reasons why a full understanding of the massacre, or incident, depending on one’s point of view, remains elusive to this day.
First and foremost, while the KMT has apologized, and compensation has been made to some families of the victims, Taiwan has not gone through a systematic process of truth and reconciliation, as experienced in South Africa following the abolition of apartheid, nor has it undergone the kind of lustration that followed the fall of communism in the former Czech Republic. Consequently, healing remains incomplete.
A second and related factor is the lack of access to all the government documents from that period. Under prevailing regulations, case files can only be seen at the request of direct family members of victims of the massacre.
With several families unwilling to reopen the wounds of this painful era or, for various reasons, uninterested in doing so, the result is that several cases will never see the light of day, and thus preclude historians from piecing together a thorough picture of the events. Academics, historians and journalists with no family connection to victims cannot, on their own, see such files.
To be fair to the Ma administration, those regulations were not altered under previous KMT governments, or — and this is noteworthy — during the eight years of the Democratic Progressive Party administration. Part of the reason is that the case files are still treated as classified documents, the time-tried excuse used by public security and military agencies the world over to keep past misdeeds away from scrutiny.
One possible reason is that the actual role of the perpetrators and the severity of their acts may be much greater than what is commonly known, which in turn could result in calls for far greater compensation to the families of victims.
Ma can ask academics to take a fresh look at the events leading to and during the 228 Massacre, but as long as laws regulating access to the complete body of files are not changed, it will be impossible for the nation to really understand what happened and to fully comprehend the scope of human catastrophe. Making all the files public is the only way to uncover the truth.
Only then can it be determined, with a comfortable degree of certitude, whether individuals such as Peng Meng-chi (彭孟緝), also known as the “Kaohsiung butcher,” have been wronged by history, as his son now claims, or if they deserve such titles for ordering the murder of several Taiwanese.
Above all, the historical truth is what the nation needs to heal its wounds and rid itself of the source of a constant divide that prevents it from moving, of one heart, into the future.
In the event of a war with China, Taiwan has some surprisingly tough defenses that could make it as difficult to tackle as a porcupine: A shoreline dotted with swamps, rocks and concrete barriers; conscription for all adult men; highways and airports that are built to double as hardened combat facilities. This porcupine has a soft underbelly, though, and the war in Iran is exposing it: energy. About 39,000 ships dock at Taiwan’s ports each year, more than the 30,000 that transit the Strait of Hormuz. About one-fifth of their inbound tonnage is coal, oil, refined fuels and liquefied natural gas (LNG),
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
The two major opposition parties, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), jointly announced on Tuesday last week that former TPP lawmaker Chang Chi-kai (張啟楷) would be their joint candidate for Chiayi mayor, following polling conducted earlier this month. It is the first case of blue-white (KMT-TPP) cooperation in selecting a joint candidate under an agreement signed by their chairpersons last month. KMT and TPP supporters have blamed their 2024 presidential election loss on failing to decide on a joint candidate, which ended in a dramatic breakdown with participants pointing fingers, calling polls unfair, sobbing and walking
RSS