A “special fund” available to the Executive Yuan using assets appropriated from the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) to further human rights education, long-term healthcare and social welfare is to be established by the end of the month, members of the Transitional Justice Commission said yesterday.
The fund has yet to be named, although transitional justice would be a theme considered for the name, members said.
The commission plans to invite the Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Culture to discuss fund allocation ratios and the purpose of the fund, the sources said.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
The Act on Promoting Transitional Justice (促進轉型正義條例) stipulates that all party assets illegally obtained after Aug. 15, 1945, should be nationalized and managed by a special fund for the promotion of transitional justice and related cultural activities.
Distribution of the funds would be project-based, such as human rights education projects for the Ministry of Education or transitional justice-related events for the Ministry of Culture, the sources said, adding that the commission would allocate the funds, but the Executive Yuan would have the final say.
Meanwhile, the committee said that the KMT is still litigating against the appropriation of assets owned by former Japanese citizens, worth NT$860 million (US$27.9 million), and the KMT’s former party headquarters, worth NT$1.13 billion.
The committee has obtained NT$12 million in funds and last year auctioned former KMT dormitories, with the proceeds going into the “special fund,” it said.
Judges presiding over the case lack understanding of transitional justice and disregard the historical truth that the KMT illegally obtained national properties for its own use, considering the committee’s actions to be “causing irreparable harm to the KMT,” it said.
Illegal profits of NT$38.7 billion that the KMT affiliated National Women’s League’s benefitted from so-called “donations to the military” are also to be confiscated, pending court action.
If the committee wins the case, the “special fund” would have much more than NT$12 million, a committee member said.
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