The Transitional Justice Commission voted to offer redress for the White Terror era political oppression of Wang Hsi-he (王錫和), and announced that an event would be held on May 31 to officially pardon all victims of the 228 Incident and ensuing Martial Law era.
The 228 Incident refers to a military crackdown by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) regime that began on Feb. 27, 1947. Thousands of people were killed in a series of protests, the majority of whom were social elites and academics.
Wang was involved in the Tseng Fu-li (曾福禮) case stemming from a raid on an alleged communist headquarters, after his colleague, Huang Ke-sheng (黃克繩), passed Wang a note telling him to run, the commission said.
Photo: Chen Yu-fu, Taipei Times
Huang’s note was meant to divert attention from himself after he informed the government that there was a “suspicious group” in a sugar factory in Yujing Township (玉井) in what was then called Tainan County, it said.
However, the Taiwan Garrison Command said that the note was a ruse to obfuscate Huang’s identity as a communist agent and as Wang received the note, it showed that he had “fallen under Huang’s influence,” the commission said, adding that it imprisoned Wang for re-education.
A “communist agent” was defined under the now-defunct Espionage Laws of the Period of the Communist Rebellion (戡亂時期檢肅匪諜條例) as “a traitor, as defined under the Punishment of Rebellion Act (懲治叛亂條例), or one who is in collusion with traitors,” the commission said.
As defined by Article 2 of the punishment act, a traitor is “one actively involved in actual acts of rebellion,” it added.
Huang’s acts violated Article 5, which prohibited joining a rebel organization, and not Article 2, so Huang should not have been considered a traitor, the commission said.
As Huang was not guilty, Wang should also be absolved of any criminal act, it said, adding that according to Huang’s testimony, there was no proof that Wang was a communist spy.
The Taiwan Garrison Command’s ruling that Huang “colluded with traitors” was an overextension of its authority, while its ruling that Wang was under Huang’s influence because they often shopped and exercised together was baseless embellishment, the commission said.
The re-education Wang underwent infringed on his dignity and freedom of thought, it added.
The commission decried the ruling as severely contravening the spirit of democratic government and the principle of a fair trial.
Meanwhile, the commission is to hold a ceremony on May 31 to symbolically pardon all victims from the 228 Incident and the Martial Law era, spokesperson Yeh Hung-ling (葉虹靈) said.
According to the commission’s findings, more than 13,401 people were wrongly or unfairly tried during the period.
The group last year investigated and issued pardons for 2,775 incidents.
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