A private think tank yesterday proposed changing the name of Chiang Kai-shek (CKS) Memorial Hall to remove the remnants of authoritarian rule under the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) regime.
The forum, organized by Taiwan Thinktank, was the second in a series of its panel discussion of justice in transition. The first focused on the KMT's stolen party assets.
Event host Hsu Yung-ming (徐永明), an assistant research fellow in political science at Academia Sinica, said that although Taiwan has transformed itself from authoritarianism to democracy, social justice is still in a transitional period.
"We are not here to talk about how to get even with the KMT but to discuss how to turn the authoritarian legacy into democratic assets," he said.
Lawyer Wang Ping-yun (
Wang proposed two possible approaches to changing the name of the CKS Memorial Hall.
First was to amend the law governing the organization and management of the hall. This may be more time-consuming as the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) does not enjoy a legislative majority.
Second was to relocate the exhibits housed at the museum to Tzuhu (慈湖), Taoyuan County, where Chiang's remains rest in a temporary mausoleum.
The hall could then be turned into a cultural or historic park in commemoration of the nation's democratization process, he said.
Lin Li-tsai (林黎彩), secretary-general of the Taiwan 228 Care Association, said that most of the families of the victims of "228 Incident" think that the memorial hall should be turned into a 228 memorial museum.
She said she was curious to know why the government continues to spend tens of thousands of taxpayers' money to maintain the hall, in spite of the publication of a book by the 228 Incident Memorial Foundation saying that the KMT should be held responsible for the 1947 massacre.
The book alleged that former president Chiang Kai-shek, as well as Chen Yi (陳儀) -- the man Chiang appointed as executive administrator of Taiwan -- were the masterminds behind the incident.
Deputy Minister of Education Chou Tsan-der (周燦德) emphasized the importance of reaching a public consensus over the issue.
"It is meaningless if we change only the name, but leave everything else intact," he said. "It is equally meaningless if we force through the name change but do not get any public support."
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching