Transitional Justice Commission Acting Chairwoman Yang Tsui (楊翠) yesterday said that the commission is shifting its attention to declassifying documents and dealing with authoritarian symbols.
Yang made the remarks during a radio interview, when the host asked her to comment on the commission’s next order of business following the one-year anniversary of its founding on May 31 last year.
The commission is to step up its efforts to collect records and documents from archives and depositories over the next year, with an eye toward increasing the volume of documents available, while it plans to start dealing with authoritarian symbols this month, she said.
Photo: George Tsorng, Taipei Times
When asked to identify the commission’s main challenges, Yang said that the bureaucratic instinct toward secrecy remains a difficulty during historical reconstruction and declassification efforts.
To exonerate victims of political persecution, the commission must first investigate the historical facts surrounding their cases, but the materials it has obtained from government agencies have often been redacted to the point of illegibility, she said.
The commission frequently has to negotiate with governmental agencies for access to documents in a less-censored form, she said.
An important contributing factor to these difficulties is the belatedness of the nation’s transitional justice program, she said, adding that resistance to transparency in many cases is rooted in institutional habit, not ill-intent.
“I believe transitional justice is a work of advocacy of which communication is a part,” she said, adding that the commission is overseeing its sixth large-scale transfer of documents of about 130,000 items.
Asked to name an event of personal emotional resonance she experienced as a member of the commission over its first year, Yang said that she was moved when former Japanese Imperial Navy veteran Huang Chin-tao (黃金島) showed up in a wheelchair at the commission’s first-ever ceremony on Oct. 5 last year, held to exonerate victims of political persecution, despite him suffering an illness.
“I was very much moved when I saw the corner of Huang’s eye glisten and he shook with emotion as he went through the documents of exoneration during the ceremony,” she said.
As she is a descendent of novelist Yang Kui (楊逵), who was jailed for 12 years for political crimes, it was deeply gratifying to see Huang at the ceremony, Yang said.
Born in Taichung during the Japanese colonial era, Huang served as a volunteer soldier in the Imperial Japanese Navy.
After Japan’s defeat in World War II in 1945, he was detained in China’s Hainan Province before escaping and returning to Taiwan.
He headed an armed uprising against Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) troops following the 228 Incident in 1947, an act for which he received a death sentence that was later commuted to life in prison.
He was released in 1975 after serving 24 years in prison.
Huang died in January aged 93.
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,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods