The Taipei City Government is waging a legal battle against the Taiwan Peace Foundation (台灣和平基金會) in a bid to scrutinize its three years of operation and management of the Taipei 228 Memorial Museum (二二八紀念館).
The city's Bureau of Cultural Affairs, caretaker of the museum, has gone to court over its year-long dispute with the foundation concerning finances of the memorial to a bloody crackdown against ethnic Taiwanese on Feb. 28, 1947.
The Taipei District Court has set Aug. 27 to hear two cases filed by the bureau against the foundation. The city government is requesting the foundation hand over financial records from the period of the foundation's management of the museum between 1997 and last year.
In addition, the city is demanding the foundation return to it records and transcripts of the book Formosa Calling by New Zealand author Allan J. Shackleton.
Shackleton, during his service with the UN Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, came to Taiwan in 1947 and witnessed atrocities committed by KMT troops from the mainland against the Taiwanese. Formosa Calling contains first-hand accounts of brutal killing.
The city claims Shackleton's son donated the the materials to the museum in 1999 but they were taken away by the foundation following the termination of its control of the museum. The foundation contends the donation was made to the foundation itself, not to the museum.
The 228 Museum was established in 1997 on the 50th anniversary of the 228 Incident, while Chen Shui-bian (
The museum was originally under the supervision of the city government's Bureau of Social Affairs, a responsibility passed to the Bureau of Cultural Affairs in November in 1999, following its establishment by Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (
The dispute erupted when Lung Ying-tai (
It is, however, widely believed that Lung, a mainlander and strong supporter of unification with China and cultural activities that emphasize Taiwan's links with the mainland was motivated by hostility to the Taiwanese nationalist consciousness-raising for which the foundation used the museum.
Damon Deng (鄧宗德), a spokesperson for the Bureau of Cultural Affairs, said the bureau had tried several times in the past to look at the foundation's financial records but Iap sternly resisted such checks.
"He made it clear that he won't give in and even encouraged us to take legal action," Deng said.
Deng claimed the bureau became suspicious of the foundation's use of the museum's revenues, including admission fees and private donations, when contradictory reports about the museum's finances circulated.
Iap, who wrote a book criticizing Ma and Lung over the dispute, claimed the money and donations at issue were given to the foundation, not to the museum.
Iap said that the foundation's management of the museum had been highly complimented and it was a malicious accusation that he had mishandled the museum's money.
"We started with a very small fund from the city government and it was the staff of the foundation who worked so hard to find revenues to support the various activities of the museum," Iap said.
Iap referred to the bureau's actions as "ethnically motivated."
"These two, both of [mainland] Chinese origin, have very strong biases toward Chinese ideology, and I think they have been waging a campaign against the pro-Taiwan foundation. But we're not going to give in so easily," Iap said.
NO RECIPROCITY: Taipei has called for cross-strait group travel to resume fully, but Beijing is only allowing people from its Fujian Province to travel to Matsu, the MAC said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday criticized an announcement by the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism that it would lift a travel ban to Taiwan only for residents of China’s Fujian Province, saying that the policy does not meet the principles of reciprocity and openness. Chinese Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism Rao Quan (饒權) yesterday morning told a delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers in a meeting in Beijing that the ministry would first allow Fujian residents to visit Lienchiang County (Matsu), adding that they would be able to travel to Taiwan proper directly once express ferry
FAST RELEASE: The council lauded the developer for completing model testing in only four days and releasing a commercial version for use by academia and industry The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) yesterday released the latest artificial intelligence (AI) language model in traditional Chinese embedded with Taiwanese cultural values. The council launched the Trustworthy AI Dialogue Engine (TAIDE) program in April last year to develop and train traditional Chinese-language models based on LLaMA, the open-source AI language model released by Meta. The program aims to tackle the information bias that is often present in international large-scale language models and take Taiwanese culture and values into consideration, it said. Llama 3-TAIDE-LX-8B-Chat-Alpha1, released yesterday, is the latest large language model in traditional Chinese. It was trained based on Meta’s Llama-3-8B
STUMPED: KMT and TPP lawmakers approved a resolution to suspend the rate hike, which the government said was unavoidable in view of rising global energy costs The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday said it has a mandate to raise electricity prices as planned after the legislature passed a non-binding resolution along partisan lines to freeze rates. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers proposed the resolution to suspend the price hike, which passed by a 59-50 vote. The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) voted with the KMT. Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT said the resolution is a mandate for the “immediate suspension of electricity price hikes” and for the Executive Yuan to review its energy policy and propose supplementary measures. A government-organized electricity price evaluation board in March
NOVEL METHODS: The PLA has adopted new approaches and recently conducted three combat readiness drills at night which included aircraft and ships, an official said Taiwan is monitoring China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) exercises for changes in their size or pattern as the nation prepares for president-elect William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) said yesterday. Tsai made the comment at a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, in response to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wang Ting-yu’s (王定宇) questions. China continues to employ a carrot-and-stick approach, in which it applies pressure with “gray zone” tactics, while attempting to entice Taiwanese with perks, Tsai said. These actions aim to help Beijing look like it has