Advocacy groups for the families of White Terror-era victims on Monday lashed out at the Taipei Public Works Department’s decision to allow visitors to hold Mid-Autumn Festival barbecues in Machangding Memorial Park (馬場町紀念公園), saying holding celebrations and installing latrines at the site is disrespectful to the dead.
About 70 protesters from the Taiwan Region Association for the Settlement of Martial Law Era Political Incidents, the Taiwan Region Victims of Political Persecution Mutual Help Association and the Cross-Strait Peace Forum gathered in front of the Taipei Public Works Department building to demonstrate.
“The blood of martyrs fell on this hill, their dignity is not for you to trample on,” they chanted.
The Machangding Memorial Park in Taipei’s Wanhua District (萬華) was a designated area for firing-squad executions of alleged communist agents, left-wing sympathizers and other political prisoners during the White Terror era.
Chen Yi (陳儀), a former governor-general of Taiwan appointed by Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) regime in 1945, was executed in 1950 in Machangding, after the regime convicted him of spying on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party.
Some of the protesters said they are the surviving family members of people slain by the regime at the facility.
In 1998, then-Taipei mayor Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) initiated a project to turn the area into a memorial park, and Machangding Memorial Park was opened in 2000, during the tenure of then-Taipei mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九).
“We find the actions of city officials disrespectful to the history of the park as well as to the rights of the dead to rest undisturbed,” Taiwan Region Association for the Settlement of Martial Law Era Political Incidents chairman Tsai Yu-jung (蔡裕榮) said.
The city government did not consult surviving family members or friends of the victims before making its decision to allow the celebration to be held in the park, Tsai added.
A department official eventually came out of the office to acknowledge receipt of the protesters’ petition to ban barbecuing in and near the memorial park, but said that the department could not make any guarantees with regard to changing its policy.
Tsai said the city government’s response was “lamentable,” adding that if the decision is not reversed, his organization “would not rule out” towing the latrines from the park and relocating the wreckage near Taipei City Hall.
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:
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