The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) should be made to compensate White Terror victims and their descendants for properties confiscated for political crimes under martial law, filmmaker Hung Wei-chien (洪維健) said.
Hung is a prolific director of documentaries about the 228 Incident and the White Terror period. His parents were killed during the White Terror.
The 228 Incident refers to the crackdown launched by the KMT regime against civilian demonstrations following an incident in Taipei on Feb. 27, 1947.
The 228 Incident also marked the beginning of the White Terror era that saw thousands of Taiwanese arrested, imprisoned and executed.
According to Hung’s estimates, the total value of properties confiscated by the then-KMT government from White Terror victims is NT$13.5 billion (US$418 million in today’s currency), and under the then-single-party state system, much of the wealth was transferred to the KMT’s coffers, which he said made the KMT liable for White Terror victims’ compensation.
Citing the Taiwan Provincial Security Command’s Report on the Estimated Value of Properties Confiscated for Treason compiled from 1949 to 1957, he said that during that period, the Security Command on average confiscated properties worth NT$140,000 every month, and NT$1.7 million every year.
The document estimated that the total value of property confiscated in the first eight years of White Terror was NT$13,620,000, which is likely to have been significantly undervalued because corrupt security agents were known to dip into expropriated property, Hung said.
For the 38-year White Terror period, there would have been an extrapolated NT$13.5 billion in property confiscations, he said.
The Ministry of the Interior had previously created a foundation for making reparations for cases of wrongful convictions for treason and espionage, and its list of about 10,000 White Terror victims could be used for a basis of compensations, he said.
Kao Chin-lang (高金朗), who was imprisoned during the White Terror era, said that the KMT still owes him reparations for confiscating money from him that is worth NT$1 million in today’s currency, and for sending secret police to take and burn his book contracts with the Commercial Press, inflicting further intellectual property losses.
He believes the KMT should compensate White Terror victims and their descendants from its coffers for unjustly expropriated properties, Kao said.
National Chengchi University’s Graduate Institute of Taiwan History director Hsueh Hua-yuan (薛化元) said that the KMT cannot wash its hands of the human rights violations that were perpetuated when it was the ruling party in Taiwan’s single-party political system, adding that “it must take responsibility for its political leadership of the nation in the past.”
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods