A number of events are to be held across the nation over the next few weeks to commemorate the 68th anniversary of the 228 Incident, an anti-government uprising and subsequent brutal crackdown that occurred in 1947.
Two memorial services will be held at the 228 Peace Memorial Park in Taipei on Saturday, while music performances will staged at the plaza in front of the Taipei 228 Memorial Museum every day from today to Saturday, the 228 Memorial Foundation said.
Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) and Democratic Progressive Party Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) are scheduled to attend one of the memorial services, which will include a concert to commemorate the victims and their families, the Taiwan Nation Alliance said.
For the third consecutive year, university students will stage music and theater performances at Liberty Square in front of Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, alongside exhibitions and accounts of the event by academics and victims and their families.
In Chiayi, a memorial service and a concert are planned for tomorrow. An exhibition of images and documents from the Incident will also open tomorrow and run until March 22 at the Chiayi 228 Memorial Park Museum.
Other memorial services will be held in Kaohsiung, New Taipei City, Taichung, Tainan, Greater Taoyuan, Pingtung and Yunlin on Saturday and in Keelung on March 8.
“228 is not a three-day holiday for people to go out and travel,” Lin Wei-lien (林偉聯), a pastor and officer of the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan and a member of the Taiwan Nation Alliance, said yesterday at a press conference at which the events were announced.
He said he hopes the memorial services and exhibitions will educate young people and children about the Incident and help to ensure that such a tragedy does not occur again in Taiwan.
Although the government has apologized many times, it is still unclear who should be held accountable for the massacre and how many people died during that period, according to Hsueh Hua-yuan (薛化元), director of National Chengchi University’s Graduate Institute of Taiwan History and the Taiwan 228 Care Association.
The official documents show discrepancies regarding the whereabouts of some people, he added.
“Forgiveness is only possible when the truth has been uncovered and the lessons of history have been learned,” said Hsueh, calling for more research to shed light on the Incident.
It is estimated that tens of thousands of Taiwanese, many of them members of the intellectual elite, were killed during the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government’s crackdown on the uprising, which began on Feb. 28, 1947, 16 months after Japan’s colonial rule over Taiwan ended.
The crackdown was prelude to nearly four decades of martial law.
MEDICAL: The bills would also upgrade the status of the Ethical Guidelines Governing the Research of Human Embryos and Embryonic Stem Cell Research to law The Executive Yuan yesterday approved two bills to govern regenerative medicine that aim to boost development of the field. Taiwan would reach an important milestone in regenerative medicine development with passage of the regenerative medicine act and the regenerative medicine preparations ordinance, which would allow studies to proceed and treatments to be developed, Deputy Minister of Health and Welfare Victor Wang (王必勝) told reporters at a news conference after a Cabinet meeting. Regenerative treatments have been used for several conditions, including cancer — by regenerating blood cells — and restoring joint function in soft tissue, Wang said. The draft legislation requires regenerative treatments
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Taiwanese should be mindful when visiting China, as Beijing in July is likely to tighten the implementation of policies on national security following the introduction of two regulations, a researcher said on Saturday. China on Friday unveiled the regulations governing the law enforcement and judicial activities of national security agencies. They would help crack down on “illegal” and “criminal” activities that Beijing considers to be endangering national security, according to reports by China’s state media. The definition of what constitutes a national security threat in China is vague, Taiwan Thinktank researcher Wu Se-chih (吳瑟致) said. The two procedural regulations are to provide Chinese
WARFARE: The PLA aims to use space-based capabilities to enhance its force projection to make the Indo-Pacific region too costly for the US to protect, experts said China is rapidly building space capabilities to be able to launch precision strikes on Taiwan, the US and its allies, US Space Force leaders said at a recent conference in London. China is developing counterspace warfare capabilities including GPS jamming systems and anti-satellite missiles at “breathtaking speed,” said General Stephen Whiting, commander of the US Space Command. In the past six years, Beijing tripled its number of dedicated intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance satellites, while rapidly fielding dual-use satellites, Whiting said, adding that the capabilities are honed for detecting movements at sea. The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might have already achieved substantial benefits