A campaign initiated last year by a group of high-schoolers to remove statues of Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) from campuses nationwide has had limited results, as school authorities said they had not yet received any formal request from the students.
The campaign was an offshoot of a series of student-led campaigns advocating for the removal of symbols of Chiang, which student activists said were associated with Chiang’s authoritarian regime.
After making a video to start the campaign on the Internet in July last year, students from Taipei Chenggong High School were joined by others from Taipei Municipal Jianguo High School, Taipei First Girls’ High School, the Affiliated Senior High School of National Taiwan Normal University, National Tainan Girls’ Senior High School, St Ignatius High School and Shu Lin Senior High School.
Photo: Hsieh Chia-chun, Taipei Times
Students staged protests and called for the removal of the statues, saying: “Authoritarian rule is over.”
Jianguo High School principal Chen Wei-hung (陳偉泓) said that students are welcome to express themselves freely, but if they fail to formally submit their opinions to authority figures: “Theirs could not be considered a proper request.”
There are no plans at present to remove Chiang’s statue from the campus, he added.
Chenggong High School principal Lee Ching-tzung (李慶宗) said that pluralism is encouraged among the students, and that school officials would respond properly if the students put forward an explicit request.
Taipei First Girls’ High School principal Yang Shih-juei (楊世瑞) said that he was not aware of the issue and he could not make any response, since there had been no debate over the matter on campus.
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