The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) should participate in transitional justice instead of opposing it all the time, Transitional Justice Commission researcher Tseng Chien-yuan (曾建元) said yesterday at a discussion hosted by the Taiwan New Century Foundation to mark International Day of Democracy on Saturday.
Former South African president F.W. de Klerk of the National Party pushed for the abolition of the apartheid system and won the Nobel Peace Prize with Nelson Mandela, Tseng said.
If the KMT approves of how South Africa approached reconciliation, it should participate in transitional justice instead of constantly opposing it, he said.
Photo: Chen Chih-chu, Taipei Times
Tseng also said that even now many people in Taiwan are “politically nostalgic” and miss former presidents Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) and Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國).
South Korea has long since removed its statues of dictators, yet Taiwan is still discussing whether its statues of Chiang Kai-shek should be removed, said Korean Studies Academy chief executive officer Rick Chu (朱立熙), who was also at the event.
Statues of former South Korean president Syngman Rhee were removed when he stepped down in 1960, Chu said, adding that former South Korean president Kim Dae-jung passed special legislation to establish agencies, such as the National Human Rights Commission of Korea and the Truth Commission, to protect the nation’s democracy.
Taiwan’s democracy is threatend by fake news created by China, he said.
The government should legislate an act for freedom of speech, and prohibit speech that extols the Chinese Communist Party made by the Chinese Unity Promotion Party, the Patriot Association and others, Chu said.
Taiwan cannot allow China to affect the morale of Taiwanese, he added.
Whether people are allowed to fly the Chinese national flag is not a matter of freedom of speech, said Leung Man-to (梁文韜), a professor in the Department of Political Science at National Cheng Kung University.
Western countries would not allow the Nazi flag to be flown in the streets, he 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