It is an intriguing sign of the changing political mood that some of the most vigorous protests over scandals involving ethnic vilification and government neglect have come from the pan-blue camp.
In this context, whether or not recalled Government Information Office envoy Kuo Kuan-ying (郭冠英) is the man behind the demented blog entries of “Fan Lan-chin” (范蘭欽) means little. The fact that racist musings on oppression and supposed Taiwanese inferiority seem to be acceptable within certain circles, together with the fact that it took so long for this issue to be dealt with, is of much greater concern.
Smarter heads in the pan-blue camp have therefore spoken out. There have been denunciations in the legislature and elsewhere by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) figures who know that detente with China requires that this kind of fuss be put to bed.
But then, in a classic example of bad timing, Wednesday’s Apple Daily reported on White Terror-era documents and preserved body parts being kept in a building once used for torturing suspects.
The body parts may be exhibits or other forms of evidence from more recent legal proceedings. However, given the manner in which they were dumped in such a grim location, the Ministry of Justice should ensure that each container of body parts is inventoried, cross-checked and — if legal processes have been completed — returned to families for disposal or independent forensic analysis if desired.
Even if the body parts have no sinister background, their discovery together with data from the White Terror era could not have produced a more nauseating symbol of neglect and state criminality.
The Fan Lan-chin controversy suggests that racist and culturalist attitudes demeaning ethnic Taiwanese may be more widespread and influential than government rhetoric would admit.
But together with the second incident, Taiwan’s greater tragedy is invoked: the unstarted — and probably unstartable — business of accountability for state criminal activity during the Martial Law era.
It is rather unlikely that an ugly building on a Taipei County hillside would store the last unaccounted-for evidence of persecution by the state. Hopefully the discovery will spur — if not shame — officials into ensuring that all remaining materials in the government’s possession are located and published.
The administration of former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) had eight long years to sweep the system to ensure that such materials were recovered, archived and released to the public. Over time it became clear that these efforts fell short. Even today, there remain documents relating to state oppression that the public cannot access except by application — a process that depends on the inscrutable discretion of archival authorities. Even then, in many cases, no recording of documents is permitted.
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has an opportunity to change all this and allow the public access to these historical materials, no matter how sensitive.
But there is reason to be skeptical. When Chen was in power, the pan-blue camp periodically accused the government of stirring up ethnic tensions. Most of the time, this was a tactic that deliberately conflated the promotion of a constructive Taiwanese consciousness with prejudice against Mainlanders, thus making it easier to stonewall sensible legislation.
How amusing it is, then, to see these same stonewallers leaping to the podium to denounce nastier expressions of their ideology so that its core principle of subservience to a wider national identity will seem less objectionable.
Less amusing is the reality that the core of the KMT’s leadership would sooner bury unaccounted-for files forever rather than exhume them.
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