After three years of work, the renovation of the Jingmei Human Rights Park’s Renai Building is complete, allowing visitors to see what the building looked like when it was a detention center for political dissidents.
Renovation work being carried out in other parts of the park in New Taipei City’s Sindian District (新店) is still ongoing, so not all of the site is open to the public.
The park holds a unique place in the history of Taiwanese human rights as it was the holding place for all prisoners under the former Taiwan Garrison Command.
When the garrison command’s Martial Law Division and detention center moved to Sindian in 1968, the Renai Building became a detention center, a transit center for political prisoners awaiting transfer to Green Island (綠島) and a makeshift courthouse.
According to government information, the building — two stories high and taking up 1,600 ping (5,289m2) of land — once held between 200 to 400 prisoners, including writer and human rights activist Bo Yang (柏楊); former lawmaker Li Ao (李敖); former vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮); Greater Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊); former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) chairmen Lin I-hsiung (林義雄), Shih Ming-te (施明德) and Yao Chia-wen (姚嘉文); DPP veteran Chang Chun-hung (張俊宏); former national policy adviser Hsieh Tsung-min (謝聰敏); as well as democracy activist and Kaohsiung county commissioner Yu Teng-fa (余登發).
National Human Rights Museum Preparatory Office director Wang Yi-chun (王逸群) said that following the nation’s successful transition to democracy, many foreign tourists have visited the site.
According to the Ministry of Culture, the process of how human rights developed and flourished in Taiwan during the Martial Law era from 1949 to 1992 draws many foreign visitors’ attention, he added.
The preparatory office has over the past three years sought to restore the park to its original form, basing its restoration on oral history from former prisoners and items from the time donated by former prisoners’ families, he said.
“We hope that the history of how their predecessors fought for liberty and freedom will remind younger generations to cherish the rights that were so hard-won,” Wang said.
In related news, dossiers on many political prisoners during the 1949 to 1987 White Terror period were opened to the public on Human Rights Day on Wednesday.
The first batch of dossiers made public are 232 verdicts on political prisoners from the 1950s, the ministry said. The verdicts are among 10,067 White Terror files that the ministry has fought to take from the Compensation Foundation for Improper Verdicts after the latter was disbanded in September.
Anyone who wishes to look at the verdicts can apply to do so at the Preparatory Office of the National Human Rights Museum, the ministry said.
Taiwan imposed martial law between May 20, 1949, and July 14, 1987, during which many people were imprisoned, tortured and executed for alleged sedition and espionage for China.
The government set up a compensation foundation on Dec. 17, 1998, to compensate victims during the martial law period.
The foundation received 10,067 applications by the time it ended its 15 years of operation in September.
The dossiers are divided into two categories: administrative documents and historical documents, which include records of court procedures, confessions and verdicts.
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