Control Yuan members Kao Feng-hsien (高鳳仙) and Yang Mei-ling (楊美鈴) have volunteered to investigate the 1952 Luku Incident (鹿窟事件) in hopes of delivering justice to villagers persecuted during the White Terror era.
Kao encouraged victims of the incident to tender their complaints to the Control Yuan, adding she hoped the investigations would truly help implement the concept of transitional justice.
The case would be the first “transitional justice” case Control Yuan members have looked into in their term of office.
Kao said she volunteered her investigative expertise based on reports given by the secretary-general of the Control Yuan’s National Defense Committee who conducted preliminary interviews with local residents.
On Dec 28, 1952, more than 10,000 sodiers and police officers reportedly blocked off all outbound roads in the Luku (鹿窟) area — which straddled the current-day New Taipei City’s Sijhih (汐止) and Shihding (石碇) districts’ borders — and arrested everyone who lived in the area.
More than 400 people in Shihding, Rueifang (瑞芳) and Sijhih were arrested, with more than 200 reportedly tortured and 35 executed, Kao said, adding that among the 200, 12 were not indicted or released for turning themselves in, while 98 were given prison sentences, 19 of whom were underaged.
The then-Ministry of National Defense said the operation was conducted based on a tip-off that there were armed militant groups supported by the Chinese Communist Party in the area.
Reports of weaponry later filed to the ministry did not seem to fit the description of “armed groups,” Kao said.
An investigation might turn up new information or evidence after 64 years, Kao said, adding that documents entrusted to Taipei City Councilor Wang Shih-chien (王世堅) by the manager of the Internet auction page “Rebirth.com” (再生.com), surnamed Hu (胡), who said he has a collection of more than 1,000 White Terror-era documents, might be of use.
The documents on Luku could yield new information on the case, Kao said.
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
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
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