The murders of the mother and twin daughters of democracy advocate Lin I-hsiung (林義雄) on Feb. 28, 1980, shocked the nation. Friday marks the 40th anniversary of that tragic incident.
Three days after the killings, a special task force made up of the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB), the Taipei City Police Department, the Ministry of Justice’s Investigation Bureau (MJIB), the Military Police Command and the National Security Bureau (NSB) was created to investigate the case.
Decades later, the nation is still no closer to getting any answers.
On Monday last week, the Transitional Justice Commission released a report of its investigation into the case, saying that the intelligence agencies involved destroyed evidence and covered up facts.
The report concluded that it cannot rule out that the authoritarian government of the time was involved.
This is a silver lining on this particularly dark cloud. Now that the commission has issued its report, it is incumbent on the government to form a new special task force to get to the truth of the matter, in terms of declassifying information and in view of changes to the statute of limitations for offenses that result in death.
First is the issue of declassification. Several of the intelligence agencies have dragged their feet on declassifying information regarding the case, with some saying that any accusation of government involvement at the time was baseless.
According to Article 10 of the Classified National Security Information Protection Act (國家機密保護法), after information has been given a “classified” designation, it “may be declassified or downgraded by the official who authorized the original classification or by the superior official based on his or her authority or upon application,” and that a “notice of declassification or downgrade shall be provided to the relevant agencies.”
The NSB, the CIB and the MJIB have the power to declassify the pertinent files in their possession, and the entities that have jurisdiction over the agencies — the president, the NSB, the Executive Yuan, and the ministries of the interior, justice and national defense — also have the power to declassify or downgrade them.
If there are concerns about the information that would be revealed and there is a reluctance to declassify them due to the prevailing culture among officials, it is up to the agencies governing them to take the responsibility and declassify the files.
Second is the statute of limitations. During former president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) term, there was a controversy over whether a 20-year or 30-year limitation should be applied to the prosecution of the Lin family murders.
However, the problem was resolved with amendments to Article 80 of the Criminal Code in May last year, when the statute of limitations for offenses that result in death was lifted.
Prosecutors can now, based on the commission’s report, proceed with finding the truth behind the murders.
Finally, it is worth mentioning the debt owed to the commission 40 years after the murders. According to the Act on Promoting Transitional Justice (促轉條例), the commission is to be dissolved in May.
The act also calls for the creation of a special fund sourced by confiscated ill-gotten assets of political parties, but a fund has yet to be established due to a ruling by the Taipei High Administrative Court.
After the middle of this year, Taiwan will no longer have the commission — an independent agency working to right the wrongs perpetrated by the authoritarian government of the past. Who then will Taiwan rely on for the transitional justice project? There are still many issues that the government and opposition must come together to solve.
Lo Cheng-chung is director of the Institute of Financial and Economic Law at Southern Taiwan University of Science and Technology.
Translated by Paul Cooper
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