Ninety people from different corners of the world -- most of whom have never met each other -- joined forces to commemorate the 228 Incident by creating an online video.
The project focused on the idea of justice for the victims of the incident and all interested parties were invited to submit their contributions, organizers said.
"Hosting the project online made it possible for people from all over the world to participate," said Miawko (
Submissions were accepted between Feb. 1 and Feb. 20, during which time organizers received hundreds of photos, drawings, video clips and poems as well as a recorded interview and a theme song for the project.
"In addition to the 10 to 15 organizers, about 80 people submitted their works. Altogether about 90 people contributed [to the making of the video]," said Takayuki, the video editor who also wishes to be known only by her online nickname.
"I really don't know the ages or occupations of the participants, since most of us don't even know each other," Miawko said.
The completed video was posted online on Monday. Although it is only four minutes and thirty-six seconds long, it was still a big challenge to complete the editing process on time.
"The most difficult part was to find a central theme for the video. I had to find a way of linking all the materials together," said Takayuki, who spent the entire Lunar New Year holiday working on the video.
"One night, I began watching the interview with Chien Tang (
Chien is a division director at the 228 Memorial Foundation.
Ultimately, only 20 seconds of the 90 minute interview with Chien were included in the video.
Writing and recording the theme song, Lily, in the space of just 10 days was also a challenge.
Tsao Hsin-wen (
"I had no hesitation in agreeing to work on the song but I was busy with another project, so I asked my uncle to write the lyrics," Tsao said.
Tsao's uncle, Kufao, proved himself more than equal to the task, as many who listened to the song were touched by its lyrics.
Kufao finished the lyrics in just two days and Tsao composed the accompanying music in three days.
"The most challenging part was finding the right singer," Tsao said.
She had to find a singer who was able to sing in Taiwanese and would do so pro bono.
"I eventually turned to Taiwan's representative office in Vienna for help," Tsao said.
Tsao was able to arrange studio time through her husband, Hans Doellinger, a professor at a conservatory in Vienna and ultimately the song -- ?and the video -- were completed on schedule.
The video begins with these words:
"The night was long and horrifying. When daylight broke the next morning, dead bodies were found floating in Keelung Harbor and on the Tienliao River."
The video then shows contemporary footage of sites on a small island near the Keelung Harbor where people were murdered 60 years ago.
It is notable that there are no signs to indicate what happened all those years ago.
"Why is there no evidence of the 228 massacre here?" the narrator asks.
After slide shows of 228 monuments across the nation and various art works depicting the violence that took place, the video shows scenes of Nazi massacres of Jews during World War II, the Nuremberg Trial and how European countries have dealt with these grim events.
"So what about Taiwan?" the narrator asks.
The project organizers explained that they were calling for an honest confession and a sincere apology from the perpetrators of the 228 Incident. Only then could there be reconciliation, they said.
"The Chinese Nationalist Party [KMT] keeps asking people to forgive," Takayuki said.
"If you strike a person, you can't just tell him to forget about it. You have to apologize first, then it's up to the victim to decide whether or not to forgive you. It's ridiculous that the perpetrator of the crime keeps telling the victims to forget about it," she added.
All of the contributors to the video were volunteers.
The video can be viewed at http://blog.roodo.com/showtaiwan.
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