Nobel laureate and former Anglican archbishop of Southern Africa Desmond Tutu visited Taiwan last week at the invitation of the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy.
Tutu is famous for his slogan "No reconciliation without truth; no future without forgiveness."
In democracy movements of the late 20th Century, "no reconciliation without truth" reflected an acknowledgment of the need to investigate major crackdowns under authoritarian governments to rebuild social harmony.
The worst excesses of Taiwan's authoritarian past include the 228 Incident, the White Terror era and the Chinese Nationalist Party's (KMT) theft of national assets. If such issues can be successfully handled, Taiwan will have realized transitional justice.
However, transitional justice cannot be achieved unilaterally. It is not a matter of "an eye for an eye;" both offenders and victims must accept the final results.
Thus, the main goals of transitional justice are reconciliation and reconstruction, rather than retaliation. Revenge, as we saw in the French, Russian, and Chinese revolutions, led only to more hatred, distortion of national character and mass decline.
As for there being "no reconciliation without truth," the first step is to find out the truth by establishing a truth commission or a similar organization. The second step is to establish the truth about crimes and offenders; the third is to admit, apologize and compensate; and the fourth step is forgiveness and rebuilding.
Only when these four steps have been implemented can reconciliation be achieved.
Taiwan has taken only the first and third steps -- and they are both unilateral. For example, although the Cabinet's special task force on the 228 Incident officially published a report of the investigation, no opposition parties or victims participated in the investigation.
The president has apologized on behalf of the government, but no offender has come forward to apologize.
The government has offered "compensation" to victims, but the offenders are not the ones paying "indemnification."
As a result, despite former president Lee Teng-hui's (
Theoretically, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) should have finished what the KMT started. However, during the past seven years, President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) government has failed to set up a truth commission and has taken only unilateral steps toward reconciliation.
While Chen has called dictator Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) the main culprit behind the 228 Incident, no national-level attempt at reconciliation has been mounted.
On the other hand, the DPP has repeatedly used the 228 Incident, the White Terror era and the KMT's stolen assets in every election campaign to boost its candidates' campaigns.
It is true that there can be no reconciliation without truth, but it is equally true that there can be no truth without a truth commission. Justice is not the privilege of any one party. The DPP's demands for justice must match Taiwanese society's demands for justice so that the public at large can accept and participate in the reconciliation process.
The DPP government came to power long after the 228 Incident and cannot unilaterally represent its victims, nor can it unilaterally determine the culprits behind it.
Transitional justice requires sympathy, not gloating. It should be achieved through national-level talks as it was in South Africa and politicians should not attempt to use it for political gain.
I hope that Tutu's visit can help put Taiwan's pursuit of transitional justice back on track.
Sun Ching-yu is a political commentator.
Translated by Eddy Chang
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