To highlight the importance of transitional justice, the Transitional Justice Commission is launching a calendar featuring 30 dates marking key events that propelled the nation’s democratization.
Although martial law ended on July 15, 1987, the nation has not really thrown off the yoke of authoritarian rule, given that formidable harm is still experienced by victims of past political persecution and their families, the commission said, adding that the political system and collective mindset are still affected by the nation’s authoritarian past.
The calendar opens with a January illustration showing the 1979 Ciaotou Incident, the first political demonstration in the Martial Law era against the then-Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government’s arrest of then-Kaohsiung county commissioner Yu Teng-fa (余登發) and his son under the pretext that they hid information about communists.
Photo: Chen Yu-fu, Taipei Times
The February illustration commemorates the 228 Incident, an uprising on Feb. 28, 1947, which was followed by the White Terror period, during which the government persecuted many political dissidents.
The March illustration shows the Wild Lily Student Movement of 1990, during which up to 6,000 students staged a hunger strike in front of the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in Taipei to push for reforms, including disbanding the National Assembly and abolishing the Temporary Provisions Effective During the Period of National Mobilization for Suppression of the Communist Rebellion.
The largest student movement before the Martial Law era, the April 6 Incident of 1949, is featured in April to remember dissident students arrested by police.
May shows the commission’s establishment on May 31 last year by President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), while June marks the promulgation in 1949 of the Act for the Control and Punishment of Rebellion, which was repealed in 1991.
July is dedicated to the lifting of martial law in 1987. August celebrates the 1994 change to official names for Aboriginal communities, ending references to “mountain residents.”
September commemorates an amendment to Article 100 of the Criminal Code, which was used to punish political dissidents before it was amended in 1992.
October recalls the assassination of author Chiang Nan (江南) — pen name of Henry Liu (劉宜良) — in California in 1984 by a gang member hired by the then-KMT government.
The Jhongli Incident, a mass demonstration against alleged ballot rigging in the 1977 Taoyuan county commissioner election, is featured in November, while December highlights Human Rights Day on Dec. 10.
The events span 71 years and the illustrations should remind people of the nation’s long road to democracy, the commission said.
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:
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