Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee Chairman Wellington Koo (顧立雄) yesterday said the organization would return the ill-gotten assets obtained by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) during its authoritarian rule to their rightful owners.
During a plaque unveiling ceremony in Taipei, Premier Lin Chuan (林全) presented Koo with a seal and an appointment order, officially launching the committee.
“Some say we are attempting to settle accounts [with the KMT]. Indeed, we are settling an account with a political party that used its power and privilege, unavailable to ordinary organizations, to illegally acquire assets during its party-state rule,” Koo said.
“Settlement” entails understanding the injustice of the KMT’s use of state apparatuses to acquire properties, compensating victims and the nation and making the truth known to the world, Koo said.
“The handling of ill-gotten party assets is not made up or a historical issue. It is an overdue task left unfinished from the nation’s transition from an authoritarian regime to a democracy,” he said.
No one, including historians or experts, knows how much property the KMT collected and disposed of since its authoritarian rule, he added.
Koo said the committee would follow legal procedures to deal with illegal party assets, but added that a timetable for the organization’s work could not be immediately proposed.
Lin said that handling illegal party assets is necessary for the nation to understand its past and transition toward a mature democracy, adding that assets the committee recognizes as illegally acquired should be returned to their original owners or the state.
“Next year will be the 30th anniversary of the lifting of martial law. The nation’s democracy is still growing, and it is necessary to remove all obstacles impeding its achievement of a full-fledged democracy,” Lin said.
To ensure a level playing field, Germany in 1990 established a committee to review the assets of political parties and organizations active in East Germany during the Cold War, which did not complete its task until 2006, Lin said.
Germany’s experience shows that it requires a prolonged effort to push reform and transition, he added.
In response to a reporter’s question regarding the eligibility of committee member Lo Cheng-tsung (羅承宗), who was sentenced to six months in prison for contravening the Copyright Act (著作權法), an apparently enraged Koo said the Act Governing the Handling of Ill-gotten Properties by Political Parties and Their Affiliate Organizations (政黨及其附隨組織不當取得財產處理條例) does not disqualify people with a criminal record from being members of the committee.
Koo was also asked whether his Democratic Progressive Party membership would affect the committee’s objectivity, but he did not give a definitive answer, saying he did not understand the question.
He later said we would be happy to welcome KMT members to apply for positions on the committee.
Taiwanese were praised for their composure after a video filmed by Taiwanese tourists capturing the moment a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck Japan’s Aomori Prefecture went viral on social media. The video shows a hotel room shaking violently amid Monday’s quake, with objects falling to the ground. Two Taiwanese began filming with their mobile phones, while two others held the sides of a TV to prevent it from falling. When the shaking stopped, the pair calmly took down the TV and laid it flat on a tatami mat, the video shows. The video also captured the group talking about the safety of their companions bathing
US climber Alex Honnold is to attempt to scale Taipei 101 without a rope and harness in a live Netflix special on Jan. 24, the streaming platform announced on Wednesday. Accounting for the time difference, the two-hour broadcast of Honnold’s climb, called Skyscraper Live, is to air on Jan. 23 in the US, Netflix said in a statement. Honnold, 40, was the first person ever to free solo climb the 900m El Capitan rock formation in Yosemite National Park — a feat that was recorded and later made into the 2018 documentary film Free Solo. Netflix previewed Skyscraper Live in October, after videos
Starting on Jan. 1, YouBike riders must have insurance to use the service, and a six-month trial of NT$5 coupons under certain conditions would be implemented to balance bike shortages, a joint statement from transportation departments across Taipei, New Taipei City and Taoyuan announced yesterday. The rental bike system operator said that coupons would be offered to riders to rent bikes from full stations, for riders who take out an electric-assisted bike from a full station, and for riders who return a bike to an empty station. All riders with YouBike accounts are automatically eligible for the program, and each membership account
A classified Pentagon-produced, multiyear assessment — the Overmatch brief — highlighted unreported Chinese capabilities to destroy US military assets and identified US supply chain choke points, painting a disturbing picture of waning US military might, a New York Times editorial published on Monday said. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s comments in November last year that “we lose every time” in Pentagon-conducted war games pitting the US against China further highlighted the uncertainty about the US’ capability to intervene in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. “It shows the Pentagon’s overreliance on expensive, vulnerable weapons as adversaries field cheap, technologically
RSS