The government might consider a plan to convert the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall into a space that honors all former presidents, Minister Without Portfolio Lin Wan-i (林萬億) said on Wednesday. Former vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) had made the suggestion on Tuesday, but Lin said that no decision would be made on what to do with the hall any time soon.
The implementation of the Act on Promoting Transitional Justice (促進轉型正義條例), which aims to remove authoritarian-era symbols and address miscarriages of justice from that era, has proved socially divisive since the law was passed by the Legislative Yuan on Dec. 5, 2017.
The Transitional Justice Commission in October last year said that there are more than 1,000 statues of Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) throughout the country at schools, parks and other public sites, and that removing or relocating them is a crucial step toward achieving transitional justice.
The commission has often compared transitional justice in Taiwan to efforts in Germany first to eliminate symbols of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nazi Party) and Adolf Hitler, and later to handle assets illicitly obtained by the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) — which governed East Germany until reunification in 1990. The commission has invited transitional justice officials from Germany to speak in Taiwan and to share their advice.
However, Taiwan’s experience is fundamentally different from Germany’s in a few important ways. Unlike the SED or the Nazi Party, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is not only still active, but is one of the nation’s two dominant political parties. The results of the local elections on Nov. 24 last year show that the KMT enjoys significant democratic support.
Arguably, Chiang is one of the symbols of the KMT, which is evident from many party members’ and supporters’ objections to the removal of his statues. Also, the KMT was the founding party of the nation as it is defined in the Constitution.
In Germany there might be overwhelming majority support for the removal of Nazi symbolism and the redistribution of SED assets, but the same strategies are not as easily applied to the KMT, its assets and its former leaders, given the support that it enjoys. The German experience also differs in that Germans were physically divided, whereas Taiwanese are only politically divided. East Germans largely longed for democracy through unification, but KMT supporters freely choose to democratically elect the party into power.
Ill-gotten party assets absolutely should be handled according to the law, and injustices such as political persecution must be rectified, but symbolism is tied to national identity, which makes it a much thornier issue in Taiwan than it was in Germany after World War II and again after reunification.
Arguably there is also a more pressing case for the elimination of Nazi symbolism in Germany, because that regime was rooted in a perverted nationalism that sought to eliminate groups of people based on a theory of racial superiority. The pinnacle of that hatred was the Holocaust, which resulted in the deaths of 17 million Jewish people, gay men, Roma, “incurably sick” people and others.
While statues of Chiang are a source of anguish for victims of political persecution, and while they are out of place in democratic Taiwan, it is highly inconceivable that they would serve to incite a renewed crackdown on political dissidents.
Removing Chiang statues requires a majority consensus on national identity and national values. If the KMT loses support, or if the KMT and its supporters resolve to distance themselves from the party’s past leadership, then it would make sense to remove the statues — especially the largest one at the memorial hall. That would also be a great time to revisit the Constitution.
The image was oddly quiet. No speeches, no flags, no dramatic announcements — just a Chinese cargo ship cutting through arctic ice and arriving in Britain in October. The Istanbul Bridge completed a journey that once existed only in theory, shaving weeks off traditional shipping routes. On paper, it was a story about efficiency. In strategic terms, it was about timing. Much like politics, arriving early matters. Especially when the route, the rules and the traffic are still undefined. For years, global politics has trained us to watch the loud moments: warships in the Taiwan Strait, sanctions announced at news conferences, leaders trading
The saga of Sarah Dzafce, the disgraced former Miss Finland, is far more significant than a mere beauty pageant controversy. It serves as a potent and painful contemporary lesson in global cultural ethics and the absolute necessity of racial respect. Her public career was instantly pulverized not by a lapse in judgement, but by a deliberate act of racial hostility, the flames of which swiftly encircled the globe. The offensive action was simple, yet profoundly provocative: a 15-second video in which Dzafce performed the infamous “slanted eyes” gesture — a crude, historically loaded caricature of East Asian features used in Western
Is a new foreign partner for Taiwan emerging in the Middle East? Last week, Taiwanese media reported that Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Francois Wu (吳志中) secretly visited Israel, a country with whom Taiwan has long shared unofficial relations but which has approached those relations cautiously. In the wake of China’s implicit but clear support for Hamas and Iran in the wake of the October 2023 assault on Israel, Jerusalem’s calculus may be changing. Both small countries facing literal existential threats, Israel and Taiwan have much to gain from closer ties. In his recent op-ed for the Washington Post, President William
A stabbing attack inside and near two busy Taipei MRT stations on Friday evening shocked the nation and made headlines in many foreign and local news media, as such indiscriminate attacks are rare in Taiwan. Four people died, including the 27-year-old suspect, and 11 people sustained injuries. At Taipei Main Station, the suspect threw smoke grenades near two exits and fatally stabbed one person who tried to stop him. He later made his way to Eslite Spectrum Nanxi department store near Zhongshan MRT Station, where he threw more smoke grenades and fatally stabbed a person on a scooter by the roadside.
RSS