Despite having joined the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) forces to fight the Japanese invasion of China, Lee Li-chun (李力群), a veteran and son of former high-ranking Taiwan-born General Lee Yu-pang (李友邦), yesterday panned the KMT over its abuse of power during the Martial Law era.
“My father was accused of and executed for something he did not do, all because of political divisions within the party [KMT],” Lee told a news conference in Taipei.
Although the news conference was ostensibly held on the eve of the 74th anniversary of the Marco Polo Bridge Incident to call on the government to pay more attention to the struggle of both Chinese and Taiwanese against Japanese imperialism, many of those in attendance chose to vent their criticism on the KMT government of the era.
Photo: Wang Min-wei, Taipei Times
Having moved to China from Taiwan in 1924 when Taiwan was still a colony of Japan, Lee Yu-pang quickly joined Nationalist army efforts to fight the Japanese forces in China and had achieved the rank of of lieutenant-general by the end of World War II.
Accused by the KMT government of being a secret member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Lee Yu-pang was arrested and imprisoned for three months in 1947.
After returning to Taiwan, he was arrested again and executed in 1952.
Lee Li-chun said his father was imprisoned and executed as the result of an internal power struggle within the KMT.
While Lee was a little reserved in his criticism of the KMT, air force veteran Hu Yao-fei (胡耀飛) was harsher.
“If you think the CCP is brutal, the KMT is no less so,” Hu said “Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) was very diabolical when he was trying to get rid of his enemies.”
Hu said that during his time in the military he had seen many of his colleagues simply “disappear” in the middle of the night, because they said something wrong, were friends with the “wrong” people, or simply because they were disliked.
Having served in the air force for two decades, “I was never promoted because I never sought promotion, and I never joined the KMT, though I was invited to do so several times,” he said.
Hu said he did not seek promotion because he wanted to keep his head down and avoid becoming a target.
He said he refused to join the KMT, “because once you became a member, you had to spy on your colleagues — and that was against everything I believed in.”
“I retired as a corporal, but I was happy, because I didn’t do anything evil at all,” Hu said.
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