Democracy advocate Chen Wen-cheng (陳文成) was commemorated at an event at National Taiwan University’s (NTU) campus where he was found dead, with Minister of Culture Cheng Li-chiun (鄭麗君) reiterating the government’s goal to achieve transitional justice.
Chen, a US-based mathematics professor, was found dead on May 20, 1981, during a visit to Taiwan.
The then-Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government claimed Chen committed suicide out of fear of being convicted for his involvement in pro-democracy movements, while his family and friends said he was murdered by the KMT government.
The event, where songs were played in tribute to Chen, was attended by dozens of students and academics.
Chen supported democracy and human rights movements, and made financial contributions to Formosa Magazine, a dissident publication.
The event was first organized in 2011 to mark the 30th anniversary of Chen’s death. Following years of petitioning by NTU students, a monument is to be constructed on the campus in his memory.
Minister of Culture Cheng Li-chiun (鄭麗君) said Chen’s murder is still a mystery and sufficient efforts have not been made to solve the murders of Chen and People Rule Foundation founder Lin I-hsiung’s (林義雄) mother and twin daughters in 1980.
“If our generation continues to ignore stories of the victimizations or trauma of the White Terror era and choose to worship dictators, how can we convince the generations to come?” Cheng said.
“There are differences in understanding the history, but we cannot forget that victimization is a common experience across political and ethnic divisions,” she said.
A draft act to establish a human rights museum is expected to pass this year to mark the 30th anniversary of the lifting of martial law, and efforts would be made to identify and commemorate historic sites where political persecution took place, Cheng said.
The government would also push to repurpose the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in Taipei as part of efforts to achieve transitional justice, Cheng added.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
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,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift