Statutory limitations on atrocities committed during the White Terror era should be removed to allow the prosecution of government agents and promote transitional justice in Taiwan, academics said at a forum on Sunday, Chinese-language media Storm reported.
Rick Chu (朱立熙), a Korean expert and CEO of the Taiwan-based Korean Studies Academy, cited as an example South Korea’s handling of the Gwangju massacre, a pro-democracy uprising in Gwangju City, South Korea, from May 18 to 28, 1980, during which many protesters were killed in a military crackdown.
The South Korean government adopted the Special Law on May 18 Democratization Movement and the Special Law on the Statute of Limitations for Crimes Against the Constitutional Order to extend the statute of limitations for offenders to perpetuity so that they can be held accountable for their crimes, Chu said.
Taiwan should also remove the statute of limitation from crimes against humanity and mass killings, and consider the prosecution of historical figures such as Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) and then-Taiwan governor Chen Yi (陳儀) who were implicated in the 228 Massacre in 1997, he said.
Chu said that transitional justice laws should incorporate statutes that would bar officials and bureaucrats who had taken part in acts that violated human rights from public service, so that people like Lin Hui-huang (林輝煌), who had served as a military prosecutor in the Formosa Incident, would not again be nominated as a candidate for Supreme Court justice.
Lin Long-shen (林雍昇), a legal expert, said that many countries have relaxed the statute of limitations and broaden the scope of prosecutions against past wrongs to implement transitional justice.
Germany continues to prosecute all crimes that occurred in East Germany from the Soviet occupation in 1945 to the German unification in 1990, Lin said, adding that evidence suggests a thorough prosecution of historic crimes is correlated to building a strong democratic society.
The academics were quoted by internet-based Chinese-language media Storm as making the suggestions at a conference held by Taiwan Professors Association (TPA) in Taipei on Sunday discussing transitional justice from a global perspective.
The 228 Incident refers to the crackdown by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) regime against civilian demonstrations following an incident in Taipei on Feb. 27, 1947. The event also marked the beginning of the White Terror era that saw thousands of Taiwanese arrested, imprisoned and executed.
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