Transitional Justice Commission member Yeh Hung-ling (葉虹靈) on Saturday said the commission is in the process of determining responsibility for injustices committed during the White Terror era.
The commission last month exonerated 1,270 victims of political persecution and the Yin Hai-kuang Foundation on Saturday held a follow-up conference to discuss the issue of holding perpetrators accountable as part of the process of restoring justice for the victims.
The foundation invited Yeh and other commission members to the discussion to give their views on the process.
Yeh said that the commission would seek to determine specifically what role the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) played in the arrest and persecution of the victims.
National Chung Cheng University professor Hsieh Shih-min (謝世民), who led the conference, said that the majority of transitional justice efforts in Taiwan are still focused on compensating victims and restoring family honor, and very few people are talking about responsibility.
However, in the case of late National Taiwan University (NTU) professor and democracy advocate Yin Hai-kuang (殷海光), who died of cancer in the 1960s, everyone wants to know who persecuted him, which shows that the issue of responsibility is actually important, Hsieh said.
The commission’s investigations are looking at the policymakers, judges, judge advocate general and other high-level officials during the Martial Law period, Yeh said.
“Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) is not the only one who should be held responsible,” Yeh said.
The commission is just starting to understand the roles of the martial law-era National Security Bureau, Investigation Bureau, Military Intelligence Bureau and the Taiwan Garrison Command, Yeh said.
The commission has struggled with the task of establishing responsibility, as many departments have protested, and the documents the commission has collected already number in the tens of thousands, Yeh said.
The commission has been operational for only two years so far and needs more time to go through everything, he said, adding that the establishment of accessible repositories of information is a step in the right direction.
NTU law professor Hsueh Chih-jen (薛智仁) said that from a traditional criminal law perspective, policymakers can only be found guilty of aiding and abetting, and their responsibility for injustices committed is deemed much less than that of those who carry out the orders.
In pursuing transitional justice, that perspective must be avoided to prevent those responsible from manipulating the system, he said.
When Germany implemented transitional justice measures following its reunification, it was lenient on whistle-blowers and those in East Germany’s judiciary, but treated policymakers like accomplices to murder, Hsueh said, adding that Taiwan should consider the same approach.
Academia Sinica researcher Wu Jui-jen (吳叡人) said that as the KMT was such a large authoritarian body, it should be collectively held responsible.
However, there is not enough support from society to pursue justice against the KMT and doing so “could cause society to collapse,” he said.
The best approach would be for the commission to pursue justice on a case-by-case basis, he said.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
RSS