Victims of political persecution said a plaque commemorating former president Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) in the Presidential Office Building should be removed before they can meet with President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文).
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) members visited victims of political persecution and their families to arrange a meeting with Tsai, but Liu Chen-tan (劉辰旦), a political prisoner during the White Terror era and director of the Taiwan Association for the Care of the Victims of Political Persecution, said he would not meet with the president “unless Tsai takes off the Ching-kuo Hall plaque” in the Presidential Office Building.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) on March 29 last year named the auditorium after Chiang and a plaque that reads “Ching-kuo Hall” was hung above its entrance.
Photo: CNA
Tsai Kuan-yu (蔡寬裕), the honorary director of the association, said Chiang was in control of the intelligence system and was responsible for the deaths of many White Terror era victims.
The government should not commemorate the former president, and the association is collecting more information about Chiang’s role in the persecution of innocent people as the head of intelligence, which would be made public to inform Taiwanese about the White Terror era.
The DPP said it understands the victims’ request and has suspended their planned meeting with the president.
The naming of Ching-kuo Hall last year sparked protests by political victims and their relatives who suffered from repression under martial law. They held news conferences condemning the commemoration of Chiang and launched a petition with Legislative Speaker Su Jia-chyuan (蘇嘉全) to remove the hall’s name.
Su promised to relay their request to the president, but a year has passed and Tsai Ing-wen has not replied, Liu said.
Former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) in 1949 established a political action committee led by Chiang Ching-kuo to direct intelligence activities, and the next year Chiang Ching-kuo was appointed head of the Department of Intelligence to the Presidential Office — the predecessor of the National Security Bureau — to supervise and coordinate intelligence activities, Tsai Kuan-yu said.
“Although it was Chiang Kai-shek who approved the persecution of political prisoners during the White Terror era, it was his son, Chiang Ching-kuo, who executed the mass arrests and controlled the intelligence system. Chiang Ching-kuo should be held accountable for the White Terror persecutions,” Tsai Kuan-yu said.
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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