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228 report released by the censors

Decades ago, when the 32-year-old Provincial Ilan Hospital Superintendent Kuo Chang-yuan (郭章垣) agreed to represent the elite of his hometown by talking with the KMT government in the hopes that he would prevent an uproar in Taipei from spreading to Ilan, he never knew that he would die because of his commitment.

Kuo was executed hours after the military police arrested him on March 18, 1947, without a public trial or tangible evidence of the charges against him. He was another victim of the 228 Incident that occurred on Feb. 28, 1947.

Kuo's body was one of the few of those executed that was secured by his family for proper burial. Most victims of the month-long ethnic conflict remained missing until the government issued their death certificates many years later.

In an investigation that took place 56 years later, Kuo's untimely death was recognized by Control Yuan members as mismanagement by the KMT authorities, led at the time by the provincial governor Chen Yi (陳儀), after the offspring of some 228 victims demanded that censors review the former administration's handling of the 228 Incident.

"No evidence was found in government documents or memos to prove that any of the eight victims, including Kuo, were guilty. They should not have been shot dead, especially without any appropriate legal proceedings. No explanation was presented in these papers at to why the military personnel arrested and executed them," stated the Control Yuan report released on March 31.

Representing a civil organization based in California for remembering 228 victims, the group sought proof of the victims' innocence.

They also asked the government to restore the victims' reputation if the investigation showed them to be innocent, since they had been previously labeled "rebels" by the KMT regime

An eight-member subcommittee engaged in the investigation completed the probe in March. Yesterday, President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) presided over a ceremony at the Presidential Office to honor the incident's victims and presented official certificates to family members of the victims to reverse the government's miscarriage of justice.

Investigators found that the mass arrests of dissidents overlooked legal proceedings and that the KMT administration possessed insufficient evidence or explanations for the detention of eight individuals, the report said.

Apart from Kuo, Li Lui-fong (李瑞峰) and his elder brother Li Lui-han (李瑞漢) were law-school graduates educated in Japan and were serving as lawyers in Taipei when the incident occurred. The brothers never returned home after being arrested on March 10, 1947. Family members and historians speculated that their arrest could have been the result of the brothers' advocacy of judicial reform under the KMT regime.

"The elder Lee, who chaired the Taipei Lawyer Association at the time, stressed the importance of advancing judicial reform and recruiting the local elite to improve local judiciary systems since the KMT provincial administrator publicly said that he would welcome any professional advice to a planned "reform" which the KMT administration touted," the Control Yuan paper said.

Chen Yi, however, later identified the elder Lee as one of the investigators behind the 228 events.

Control Yuan members found that the brothers were listed on an intelligence-bureau roster of executed rioters kept in classified files of the National Security Bureau.
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