President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday said that her administration would continue work to declassify old government records as part of its transitional justice efforts.
Tsai made the remarks at the opening of a symposium hosted by the Academia Historica in Taipei.
Declassifying old government records is not just for transitional justice, but it also befits the government’s “open government” ideals and allows public access to government information, Tsai said.
Photo: CNA
While the Academia Historica is tasked with managing presidential and vice presidential records and artifacts, Tsai said that the Academia Historica belongs to the public, and that academics and members of the public are welcome to make use of archived documents so that with critical analysis of historical truth, there can be a more diverse explanation of the nation’s history.
Tsai applauded the Academia Historica under the leadership of president Wu Mi-cha (吳密察) for having swiftly compiled 260,000 documents for online publication.
“Without the limitation of time and space, members of the public and researchers can freely browse the archive, which is of great help to the development of research on history,” Tsai said of the institute’s publication in April of formerly confidential government archives dating to Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) regime.
The files, accessible on the institution’s archive at http://ahonline.drnh.gov.tw, were uploaded in several batches between January and April after being individually reviewed between August and December last year.
The collection includes documents related to the Northern Expedition — a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) campaign led by Chiang against local warlords in China from 1926 to 1928; the Second Sino-Japanese War; Taiwan-China unification plans and government suppression of civil strife, the institute said.
The collection includes manuscripts, electronic documents, letters, books, maps, photographs and other articles, the institute said, adding that they represent 98.8 percent of all existing documents related to Chiang.
The remainder includes items that cannot be posted due to copyright restrictions (0.74 percent) and some that are restricted due to privacy concerns (0.44 percent), while 0.02 percent are permanently confidential to protect intelligence sources, it said.
China might accelerate its strategic actions toward Taiwan, the South China Sea and across the first island chain, after the US officially entered a military conflict with Iran, as Beijing would perceive Washington as incapable of fighting a two-front war, a military expert said yesterday. The US’ ongoing conflict with Iran is not merely an act of retaliation or a “delaying tactic,” but a strategic military campaign aimed at dismantling Tehran’s nuclear capabilities and reshaping the regional order in the Middle East, said National Defense University distinguished adjunct lecturer Holmes Liao (廖宏祥), former McDonnell Douglas Aerospace representative in Taiwan. If
ECHOVIRUS 11: The rate of enterovirus infections in northern Taiwan increased last week, with a four-year-old girl developing acute flaccid paralysis, the CDC said Two imported cases of chikungunya fever were reported last week, raising the total this year to 13 cases — the most for the same period in 18 years, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday. The two cases were a Taiwanese and a foreign national who both arrived from Indonesia, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The 13 cases reported this year are the most for the same period since chikungunya was added to the list of notifiable communicable diseases in October 2007, she said, adding that all the cases this year were imported, including 11 from
Prosecutors in New Taipei City yesterday indicted 31 individuals affiliated with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) for allegedly forging thousands of signatures in recall campaigns targeting three Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers. The indictments stem from investigations launched earlier this year after DPP lawmakers Su Chiao-hui (蘇巧慧) and Lee Kuen-cheng (李坤城) filed criminal complaints accusing campaign organizers of submitting false signatures in recall petitions against them. According to the New Taipei District Prosecutors Office, a total of 2,566 forged recall proposal forms in the initial proposer petition were found during the probe. Among those
A 23-year-old Taichung man vowed to drink more water after his heavy consumption of sugary tea landed him in hospital with a kidney infection and sepsis. The man, surnamed Lin (林), used to drink two cups of half-sugar oolong tea while working at a food stall, where he often had to wait a long time before urinating. Lin developed kidney stones and noticed blood in his urine, but ignored the issue after taking medication for three days. A month later, he went to the emergency room after experiencing a recurring fever and was diagnosed with a kidney infection that led to sepsis, landing