Since the passage of the Act on Promoting Transitional Justice (促進轉型正義條例) on Dec. 5, people have been speculating if, when and how former president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) symbols will be removed.
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration has lamented that the question unfairly reduces the grand project of transitional justice to a single issue, but the answer to this question is long overdue.
For decades, Chiang’s statues have stood in public places, his portrait has adorned the nation’s NT$1, NT$5 and NT$10 coins, and schools and roads have been named after him, serving as a heart-wrenching reminder that despite Taiwan’s democratization in the 1990s, a dictator blamed for the deaths of 10 million people continues to be honored and remembered here.
That is why the symbols have been repeatedly vandalized and singled out by proponents of transitional justice as an issue that demands change.
Passing the act has been hailed as an important milestone on Taiwan’s path of democratic consolidation, but change might not come as quickly and extensively as some had hoped, despite the establishment on Dec. 7 of an independent ad hoc commission of the Executive Yuan for the promotion of transitional justice, just two days after the law was passed.
The speed and extent to which the commission will deal with Chiang’s symbols hinges on the DPP’s “pragmatic” evaluation of public opinion, said National Chengchi University (NCCU) Graduate Institute of Taiwan History chair Li Fu-chung (李福鐘), who sits on the Cabinet’s Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee.
“Judging from my experiences at the party asset settlement committee, you can choose to either cut to the bone when dealing with the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) ill-gotten assets or show some level of leniency,” Li said. “The DPP administration has apparently opted for the latter.”
Li said the same applies to the ad hoc commission: The nine-member body might either address only a few symbolic items that have a more limited effect on society as a whole — such as Taipei’s Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall or Chiang’s statues in public places — or go all the way to erase his name and portrait from all aspects of people’s lives.
Public opinion will have a decisive say in whether the DPP administration will adopt the more extensive approach, Li said.
“After all, Taiwanese politics have always been about pragmatism, which is local politicians’ guiding principle and the key to whether they can win votes,” he said.
Li said another thing to pay close attention to is the appointment of the commission’s chairman, who is to be nominated by Premier William Lai (賴清德) and approved by the legislature — they will effectively decide the commission’s character and priorities.
The act was designed as “framework legislation,” which means that the task of removing symbols related to Chiang might take longer than expected, Taiwan Association for Truth and Reconciliation executive secretary Su Ching-hsuan (蘇慶軒) said.
“The act only describes the main tasks of the commission,” Su said. “Each individual task will have to be fleshed out in another piece of legislation. This takes time and increases uncertainty.”
Su said that the legislature has passed or proposed bills to provide a legal basis for most of the commission’s primary tasks, including a draft political archives act for the declassification and collection of political archives and the National Human Rights Museum Organization Act (國家人權博物館組織法) for the preservation of historical sites of injustice.
However, the task of “erasing symbols nostalgic or in memory of authoritarian rulers in public buildings and spaces” might have to wait until the ad hoc commission draws up legislation and submits it to the legislature, Su said.
It goes without saying that the image of an initiator of human rights violations that have deeply affected people’s lives should be erased, Su said when asked about Chiang’s statues.
“As long as there is one victim of Chiang’s state violence urging the removal of his symbols, we should do it,” Su said. “Otherwise, are we not telling the victims to just suck it up? Then what is the point of passing a transitional justice promotion act in the first place?”
As an example, Su said removing statues from their original locations would send a message that their erection was illegitimate and that human rights values should be respected.
However, removing Chiang’s statues will be a difficult process that stirs up controversy, said Lin Nan-tung (林南彤), president of NCCU’s Wild Fire student group, whose continued pressure on university authorities to remove two on-campus Chiang statues yielded a “semi-victory” this year.
NCCU used to be known as the Central Party Affairs School, of which Chiang served as president from its establishment in Nanjing, China, in 1927 until 1947 and which awarded him the honorary title of “perpetual president emeritus.”
Amid growing pressure from the student group, NCCU authorities in January established a “statue committee.” In September, the university passed a motion to dispose of one of the two statues, but it has yet to decide which one.
“Even a small community like NCCU had to hold three dispute-laden public hearings before the matter was taken up by the school affairs meeting,” Lin said, adding that progress was slow, but the group managed to change some minds in the process.
Some people harbored the misconception that the passage of the act would immediately be followed by the eradication of symbols, but such reforms are not possible before the historical truth and political archives are restored, Lin said.
Education is another important element of transitional justice, Lin said.
“Instead of simply removing Chiang’s statues, we should go the extra mile and put up signs in their original locations, explaining to younger people what used to stand there and why it had to be taken away,” she said. “That is what transitional justice is all about.”
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