Chen calls for new probes of murders

President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) yesterday threw his support behind the Executive Yuan's initiative to investigate political murders committed during the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) regime.

The government should launch a full-scale probe into "career students" who spied on political dissidents for the government, he said.

As Taiwan has become a democracy governed by the rule of law, it is not acceptable that political parties should get away with having colluded with gangsters in political assassinations, he said.

Chen the remarks in an address to the Democratic Progressive Party's (DPP) Central Executive Committee yesterday afternoon.

Chen the government should continue the investigation of political murders committed during the KMT era, including the murders of former DPP chairman Lin I-hsiung's family (林義雄), Carnegie Mellon University professor Chen Wen-cheng (陳文成) and US-based writer Henry Liu (劉宜良), better known by his pen name Jiang Nan (江南).

Lin's twin daughters and his mother were murdered on Feb. 28, 1980, while he was in jail for participating in democracy demonstrations in Kaohsiung in December 1979.

The attack is believed to have been politically motivated, as it occurred on the anniversary of the 228 Incident.

Chen Wen-cheng was found dead on the grounds of National Taiwan University a day after being questioned by secret police in 1981.

Henry Liu was killed on Oct. 16 at his house in San Francisco by a Taiwanese gangster commissioned by the Military Intelligence Bureau.

Liu's Tsui Ron-chi (崔蓉芝), believes that her husband was only one of several journalists, writers and dissidents targeted for assassination by the KMT.

The president accused organized crime syndicates of portraying Liu's assassination as a heroic act at the funeral of his murderer, Bamboo Union crime boss Chen Chi-li (陳啟禮). The administration will not tolerate social order being disturbed, the president said.

KMT candidate Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday shrugged off the president's pledge to launch fresh investigations into the unsolved murders and student spy allegations, urging him not to use the murders as an election tool.

"[He] is only interested in these cases at election time. He has done nothing to solve them and is raising them after I promised to reopen the cases," Ma said.

Ma, during a visit to Green Island earlier this month, expressed sympathy with victims of past political persecution and pledged to improve the accountability of the intelligence and national security apparatus and to open fresh investigations into several prominent unsolved cases of political persecution if elected president.

In related news, former DPP chairman Hsu Hsin-liang (許信良) yesterday confirmed rumors that it had emerged that the KMT regime plotted to assassinate him for political reasons.

"I am not surprised at the [plotted] political murder at all and I admire Jimmy Wang (王羽) for his courage in telling the truth," Hsu said in an interview with ETTV Cable News.

Wang the Liberty Times, (the Taipei Times' sister paper) last Tuesday that the KMT regime had asked him to assassinate Hsu, who was living in the US at the time.

Hsu to the US in 1979 during a crackdown on independence advocates in Taiwan and lived there for 10 years. He now lives in Taiwan.

Hsu he would have died if God hadn't protected him, because the KMT did send an assassin, who attempted to kill him at a demonstration.

"I almost got killed by a gang member in public," he said, adding that the attempt on his life occurred at a political rally in 1981, when a man rushed at him with a large knife, narrowly missing his head.

The KMT wanted to make the killing look like a personal dispute, he said, adding that the assassin had shouted: "Hsu Hsin-liang, why did you send someone to beat me up?"

Hsu on the KMT, which has dismissed Wang's accusation, to come clean over its history.

Additional reporting by Mo Yan-chih Also see