President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday said he would continue to apologize to victims of the 228 Incident and their families, and that while he would not ask for their forgiveness, he could assure them that such atrocities would never be repeated in Taiwan.
Ma said that while the 228 Incident was the most “heinous and important incident” in Taiwan’s modern history, the executions of Chang Chi-lang (張七郎) and two of his sons, Chang Tsung-jen (張宗仁) and Chang Kuo-jen (張果仁), were the most tragic and unjust.
“I cannot believe a government that was about to implement the Constitution could use such a grisly means to make such a serious and irreversible mistake,” he said. “I’m deeply sorry about what happened and I want to apologize. Many people have asked me: ‘Haven’t I apologized enough,’ but my answer to them is that I can never apologize enough.”
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
Bowing to the ceiling-to-floor posters of Chang Chi-lang and his two sons, Ma said he would not ask for the forgiveness of the victims and their families, but he promised them he would never forget such brutality and that he would not allow such a thing to happen again.
“We can forgive errors made in the past, but we should never forget the lessons we learn from them,” he said. “That is a principle I will forever uphold.”
Ma made the remarks when attending a memorial service for Chang Chi-lang and his two sons at the National 228 Memorial Museum.
Yesterday also marked the first day of the museum’s exhibition of their documents and personal effects.
Chang Chi-lang was a National Assembly member who was killed by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) troops in the aftermath of the 228 Incident. He was one of the Taiwanese who participated in the adoption of the Republic of China (ROC) Constitution in Nanjing, China, on Dec. 25, 1946.
His two sons were practicing medicine at the hospital their father founded in Fonglin Township (鳳林), Hualien County. They were accused of “betraying the party and the country” and “organizing assassination operations.”
They were 31 and 25 when they were executed.
Ma said that as the real reason for the injustice was unclear, he hoped the 228 Memorial Foundation would help discover the truth.
“There is no taboo or inhibition. The more information we have, the clearer the truth will present itself,” he said.
National 228 Memorial Museum chairman Steve Chan (詹啟賢) said the 228 Memorial Foundation had formed a six-person truth-finding task force to study the 228 Incident and individual cases.
However, Chan said the organization does not have any legal powers and can only conduct studies from an historical perspective.
The task force, headed by former Overseas Compatriots Affairs Commission chairperson Chang Fu-mei (張富美), includes two historians, two representatives of victims’ families and two former Control Yuan members.
The foundation also plans to begin providing victims’ families with psychological counseling in a few months, he said, adding that the team would be led by Chen Yong-shing (陳永興), director of Saint Mary’s Hospital in Yilan.
Chang An-man (張安滿), the grandson of Chang Chi-lang, wept as he told stories of his grandfather and his father, Chang Tsung-jen.
He said his grandfather cheerfully welcomed the ROC government and KMT troops after Japan was defeated in World War II, but it was ROC troops who murdered him.
“I always wonder what kind of a government the ROC is and whether the national leaders are humans or beasts. How can they be so cruel to their people and their children? But I don’t have an answer,” he said. “I hope future leaders will never let such atrocities happen to Taiwanese again and that the truth of the 228 Incident will one day be known.”
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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
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