On Tuesday, the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) released a statement calling on Beijing to acknowledge the historical facts surrounding the event and to heed calls for democracy.
“Historical facts must not be concealed and that truth must not be undermined,” the statement said.
The hypocrisy of this statement seems to have been lost on the KMT, which at every step has been undermining efforts by the Transitional Justice Commission to access KMT records related to atrocities committed by the party’s former regime in the 228 Incident.
Former New Taipei City mayor Eric Chu (朱立倫), a presidential hopeful, said that as Taiwan’s experience with the Incident and the White Terror era shows, “history can never be concealed and the best approach is to face it.”
Yet, just last month the commission said that of the 43,095 files received from the KMT — which were supposed to shed light on the atrocities — the first half were nonpolitical in nature, mainly documenting the party’s battles against Japan during World War II. Many other materials it sent to the commission included research into the Ming and Qing dynasties, the Empress Dowager Cixi (慈禧太后), the Boxer Rebellion and the Eight-Nation Alliance.
None of the files contained information on the KMT’s actions toward dissidents, but it is believed that such information is in the records of party committees, commission member Yeh Hung-ling (葉虹靈) said.
The party might as well have sent nothing to the commission, but instead it opted to make a mockery of the process and to insult the memories of the families of victims of political persecution. Democratization in Taiwan has been a hard-fought struggle of those outside the KMT, many of whom went on to form the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), but the KMT appears to want to take credit for the successes of this struggle — which it continues to resist, even today.
The KMT’s statement on Tuesday even included a thinly veiled jab at the transitional justice efforts of the DPP via the commission, saying: “To advance their political interests, certain political leaders have tried to distort history under the pretense of promoting justice or reforms, against the principles of democracy and the rule of law.”
The commission on Thursday last week overturned the convictions of 2,006 political victims of the White Terror and authoritarian eras, including former vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) and Presidential Office Secretary-General Chen Chu (陳菊). The ceremony was attended by many key political figures, including Vice President Chen Chien-jen (陳建仁), yet the KMT was conspicuously absent and did not issue a statement of congratulations to the exonerated.
Bringing justice to victims of political persecution is an important step in a nation’s democratization, which the KMT acknowledged on Tuesday when it admonished China, saying that “facing history and allowing those requests from people to be truthfully presented is the only way to heal the pain from the past and move toward a better future.” Surely the KMT must feel that Taiwanese deserve the same.
KMT Vice Chairman Tseng Yung-chuan (曾永權) in February said that the transitional justice process in Taiwan is different from that of Germany, because “the KMT still exists as an opposition party, instead of disappearing like East Germany’s ruling party.”
That is absolutely true, and it is precisely for this reason that the KMT has a responsibility to its supporters and to Taiwanese in general to face its past injustices and provide relief to the families of victims.
Taiwan is a multiparty democracy and it is important for the nation to have opposition parties. The KMT should not feel attacked, but it should participate openly in the transitional justice process. It has nothing to lose in doing so, as the history is already known. Rather, openness from the KMT would only win it more supporters and gain it public trust.
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