The Transitional Justice Commission is being completely unreasonable by forcing the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) to turn over 200,000 historic files within one month and in formats specified by the commission, the party said yesterday.
The Act on Promoting Transitional Justice (促進轉型正義條例) severely overstepped the authority of the judicial branch and infringed upon people’s right to property, acting KMT Culture and Communications Committee Director-General Tang Te-ming (唐德明) said, adding that the act also fails to provide a clear definition of what constitutes a “political file.”
Any person could be subject to criminal punishment if the Transitional Justice Commission believes that they intend to hide or destroy “political files,” Tang said.
Photo: CNA
The KMT was told to transcribe all political files into forms stipulated by the agency within one month or face punishment, regardless of the number of files that the party has to handle, Tang said, adding that it is an example of the commission’s ruthless and barbaric methods.
The party was also asked to turn in all documents related to the 228 Incident or from the Martial Law era — between Aug. 15, 1945 and Nov. 16, 1992 — Tang said.
He said that the KMT has only two volunteers to manage its archives after the Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee froze all of the party’s assets, adding that the party has published more than 200,000 pieces of historic information and uploaded them to its Web site.
Going through all the information alone would take more than one month, Tang said.
“With the personnel that we have now, it is simply a mission impossible for us to tender those files in formats stipulated by the Transitional Justice Commission, even Tom Cruise could not do it in a month,” he said.
The commission could download the party’s online archives, which are open to anyone regardless of nationality, or unfreeze the party’s assets so that it could hire more people to handle the files, Tang said.
He questioned the motives behind the commission’s move, as it ordered all political parties to submit political files within one month only one day after the Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee on Tuesday last week ruled the China Youth Corp an affiliate of the KMT.
The committee and the commission are apparently competing for the best performance review, trying to help the Democratic Progressive Party to win the Nov. 24 nine-in-one elections, he said.
The commission yesterday said it is collecting the files from political parties to “restore historic truth and return the files to the public.”
“The KMT has so far declined to accept or respond to the commission’s invitations to attend any coordination meeting,” the commission said in a statement. “Instead, it has kept leveling accusations at news conferences.”
If the KMT has trouble meeting the one-month deadline due to a shortage of personnel and resources, the commission is willing to assist by sending archive management professionals who can help transcribe files and select files that should be handed to the government, it said.
The KMT claims that it has published all its files for everybody to access, but the committee suspects that the party is still sitting on many confidential files that it has yet to disclose, including those related to 228 Incident, the commission said.
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