Students at National Taiwan University (NTU) yesterday called on the school to turn over documents signed by Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) during the White Terror era to the Transitional Justice Commission.
The National Taiwan University Student Association said NTU would be on the wrong side of history if it refused to turn over papers it received as part of a 2005 collaboration with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) to create a “KMT historic archive.”
The commission ruled that under the Political Archives Act (政治檔案法) the files belong to the nation, and asked NTU to transfer 4,286 documents in its possession that had been signed by Chiang to the government by Tuesday.
By refusing to turn in the files, the school is obstructing a government agency in the course of discharging its duties, the association said.
The school is also denying Taiwanese the right to understand atrocities committed during the White Terror era, it added.
It said that this was not the first time that the university has acted against the public interest, as some faculty members openly opposed building a monument and memorial plaza on the campus to honor White Terror victim Chen Wen-chen (陳文成) had openly opposed the plan.
Chen, an NTU mathematics graduate and an assistant professor of mathematics at Carnegie Mellon University, returned to Taipei on May 20, 1981, to visit his parents.
On the morning of July 2, he was taken by the now-defunct Taiwan Garrison Command — which wanted to question him about financial contributions to the pro-democracy Formosa Magazine — and was found dead the next morning outside the university library, where the memorial square is to be located.
The student association said that a professor who attended the monument meeting had allegedly opposed it, claiming that many female students were unsettled by the staircase near where Chen’s body was discovered and that it had been the subject of many ghost stories.
University authorities have since distanced themselves from the proposed plaza and monument, saying that it was “too politicized” and that they would not help with fundraising for the project, the association said.
The group added that the term “too politicized” was only used because the monument was in conflict with the school’s interests.
Transitional justice is political, and a party dating back to the White Terror era is still alive and well in Taiwanese politics due to a reluctance to criticize the authoritarian period, the association said.
If historical events are not put into perspective and are not made transparent, people risk losing their hard-won democracy and freedom, it said.
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