INTERVIEW
The Act on Promoting Transitional Justice (促進轉型正義條例), which was passed on Tuesday, is a move toward a mature democracy and not about exacting revenge, Academia Historica director Wu Mi-cha (吳密察) said in a recent interview with the Liberty Times (the sister newspaper of the Taipei Times).
The Executive Yuan is required by law to establish an ad hoc committee to implement transitional justice measures set forth under the law, including the retrieval of political archives held by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), which could significantly add to the understanding of the era.
Photo: Chien Jung-fong, Taipei Times
According to the law, political parties and affiliated organizations are obligated to hand over archives determined by the committee to be national archives or face a fine of between NT$1.5 million and NT$5 million (US$49,975 and US$166,583). The fine can be repeated if necessary.
Wu said the KMT should respond to the act by drawing on historical records in its possession to show that the party has changed.
The act is an important part of Taiwan’s democratization and liberalization processes, Wu said, adding that the Democratic Progressive Party was unable to promote the act when it first came to power in 2000, as it did not have a majority in the legislature.
The KMT showed no interest in promoting transitional justice when they returned to office in 2008, despite claiming to be different from the KMT of the past, he added.
Whether the act can be successfully implemented now will be a test of the maturity of the nation’s democracy, Wu said, adding that a democracy that is defined merely as the election of one out of a few individuals is not a good democracy.
“If this is done well, then no individual or party will be held accountable for past crimes,” Wu said.
Many KMT party members today rely on the support of local constituencies, and there is no need for them to bear the burden of the party’s past crimes, he said, adding that, conversely, the KMT can borrow from the impetus of the transitional justice process and win support by showing commitment to its efforts.
Reports that government divisions made to the central government during the authoritarian period provide important records of the time, Wu said, citing communications between the then-Taiwan Province governor and the central government in China’s Nanjing during the 228 Incident.
The public also has yet to see documents detailing the “blacklisting” of some overseas Taiwanese students by the KMT, he said, adding that such documents would have been kept by the party’s overseas affiliate organizations at the time.
Wu said that many overseas students of the time found themselves unable to enter public universities or the Academia Sinica upon returning to Taiwan, even when their academic records had passed inspection.
Collecting and making public the records of those blacklisted students, which are spread out among various organizations, would provide a more complete historical picture, he said.
“In any nation where public records are hidden away or destroyed, people are going to be distrustful of the government,” Wu said.
“Therefore, it is imperative that whatever organization is tasked with managing government documents has the public’s trust,” Wu said, adding: “Document declassification processes must be transparent and systematic, with progress and access restrictions being clearly explained.”
The process of accessing government records must be simple to reduce public distrust, Wu 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