Minister of Justice Wang Ching-feng (王清峰) yesterday asked the ministry to launch an investigation into the matter, while Tsai Chung-yu (蔡中鈺), deputy director of the Investigation Bureau, admitted that the bureau had mismanaged the Ankeng facility.
“We will organize the contents and hand them over to the National Archives Administration,” he said.
He said the materials were photographs and fingerprints taken from detainees and not classified personal data, but added that the bureau would hand them over to the administration for safe keeping.
Lin Tsyr-ling (林慈玲), acting director-general of the National Archives Administration, said yesterday that the administration had urged the Investigation Bureau to organize the materials as soon as possible.
Lin said the administration had not been aware that so many materials had been left unguarded and “neither was the Investigation Bureau’s archives administration” aware.
“The place houses a miscellany of documents, some of which seem, at first glance, unnecessary to keep in the archives, but we hope the Investigation Bureau will examine them all carefully,” Lin said after visiting the Ankeng facility.
Lin said the discovery reflected problems with the collection of documents from the Martial Law era.
“As the Archives Act (檔案法) was not implemented until 2002, the government got a late start in managing the archives. A major problem was that some state agencies were dissolved with the lifting of martial law and they did not transfer their documents to other agencies,” Lin said.
When asked for comment, KMT Legislator Chang Hsien-yao (張顯耀) urged the bureau to file the data as soon as possible.
“[The guesthouse] became a warehouse after the Investigation Bureau took it over from the Taiwan Garrison Command because no particular government agency was put in charge of it,” Chang said.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY SHELLEY HUANG, FLORA WANG AND AP
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