The Transitional Justice Commission on Sunday announced that it would investigate the death of democracy and human rights advocate Chen Wen-chen (陳文成), as well as other unresolved cases that were allegedly politically motivated, with the help of tens of thousands of political documents.
Chen was found dead 37 years ago today next to what is now National Taiwan University’s (NTU) Department of Library and Information Sciences building, after having been questioned by Taiwan Garrison Command officers the day before.
Born in 1950 and an NTU graduate, Chen was an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University when he returned to Taiwan on May 20, 1981, to visit his family.
The Dr Chen Wen-chen Memorial Foundation has said that its investigations found that Chen was questioned about overseas students who had allegedly served as informants for the then-Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) regime.
The officers questioned Chen about his establishment of a foundation in the US to fundraise for the now-defunct pro-democracy Formosa Magazine, the foundation said.
Although US forensic doctors found signs of torture on Chen’s body, the garrison command claimed that Chen committed suicide, the foundation said.
The justice commission’s investigation of Chen’s case, the murder of veteran pro-democracy campaigner Lin I-hsiung’s (林義雄) mother and twin daughters in 1980 and other allegedly political cases would be deeper and more specific than what has been done until now, commission Deputy Chairperson Chang Tien-chin (張天欽) said.
The commission is to conduct a comprehensive investigation of the assailants and systems of accomplices during the period of authoritarian rule, he said.
The commission would not only clarify the role of Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), but also the complicated structures that made such violence possible, he added.
The commission has reportedly already sought the cooperation of the Ministry of Justice’s Investigation Bureau, which is to provide the commission with documents for investigation.
Media have reported that the commission would begin by selecting 10,000 out of 30,000 documents that it believes merit investigation and pick out any documents relevant to the cases.
Since its official launch on May 31, the commission has received more than 40 letters of appeal from the public, an unnamed government official said.
Most of the letters were written by people seeking redress for injustices, followed by people hoping to remove authoritarian symbols, the source said, adding that the letters show that the public has high hopes for the commission.
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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching