Taiwan finds itself in a period of transitional justice. Taiwanese, determined to make social dialogue a reality, are facing challenges with courage and hope.
An article on Monday last week titled “Taiwan’s hopes for transitional justice” by Academia Sinica research fellow Wu Nai-teh (吳乃德) in the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) made a big impact as it pointed out several ways to create social dialogue.
The best place for implementing these ideas is the museum at the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall.
During President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) first term in office, the Ministry of Culture ran a memorial hall review and art transformation project, but the project did not generate enough ideas.
The media reported that many programs remained unannounced, stuck in the Executive Yuan, Whether they were not announced following passionate decisions over political name rectification in 2007 and 2008 will never be known.
During the first name rectification campaign in 2007, almost 100 White Terror and 228 Incident victims and family members stepped into the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall for the first time in their lives to express their support for changing the name to National Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall.
It is difficult to imagine what they felt as they did so.
In 2008, then-president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) undid the name change and proposed an exhibition that would show Chiang’s mistakes as well as his achievements, something he never followed through on during his eight years in office.
Wu’s article brought up the complicated issue of whether the memorial hall should be kept.
Before politicians make a decision, he wrote, it would build mutual understanding to use the memorial hall as a museum in which people could talk about the nation’s contested history, as was intended by the theme for International Museum Day in 2017: “Museums and Contested Histories: Saying the Unspeakable in Museums.”
The theme for this year’s International Museum Day is “Museums for Equality: Diversity and Inclusion.”
Perhaps this could offer Taiwanese society an opportunity to collectively gain a deeper understanding of difficulties encountered and achievements gained in transitional justice experiences in Germany and South Africa, as well as countries in eastern Europe, South America and Asia.
Using the memorial hall space to host comparative exhibitions, films, symposiums and other activities addressing transitional justice in Taiwan and abroad, while also collecting and publishing visitors’ opinions would be a transparent and creative way to gauge public opinion and build mutual trust, while respecting democracy and freedom.
The Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, the National Human Rights Museum, the National 228 Memorial Museum and the Transitional Justice Commission should work together with private museums to gain an understanding of what most members of the public are thinking.
Using the museum in this way would have the lowest social cost, while offering the best opportunity for dialogue and making use of soft power.
It is also a precious and unique opportunity gifted to Taiwanese by their forbears’ sacrifice and struggle, which built the freedom that Taiwan enjoys today. It is an opportunity for all of Taiwan to show the world how it implements transitional justice.
Tsao Chin-jung is president of Taiwan Art-in Design.
Translated by Perry Svensson
From the Iran war and nuclear weapons to tariffs and artificial intelligence, the agenda for this week’s Beijing summit between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is packed. Xi would almost certainly bring up Taiwan, if only to demonstrate his inflexibility on the matter. However, no one needs to meet with Xi face-to-face to understand his stance. A visit to the National Museum of China in Beijing — in particular, the “Road to Rejuvenation” exhibition, which chronicles the rise and rule of the Chinese Communist Party — might be even more revealing. Xi took the members
A Pale View of Hills, a movie released last year, follows the story of a Japanese woman from Nagasaki who moved to Britain in the 1950s with her British husband and daughter from a previous marriage. The daughter was born at a time when memories of the US atomic bombing of Nagasaki during World War II and anxiety over the effects of nuclear radiation still haunted the community. It is a reflection on the legacy of the local and national trauma of the bombing that ended the period of Japanese militarism. A central theme of the movie is the need, at
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) on Friday used their legislative majority to push their version of a special defense budget bill to fund the purchase of US military equipment, with the combined spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.78 billion). The bill, which fell short of the Executive Yuan’s NT$1.25 trillion request, was passed by a 59-0 margin with 48 abstentions in the 113-seat legislature. KMT Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文), who reportedly met with TPP Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) for a private meeting before holding a joint post-vote news conference, was said to have mobilized her
Before the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its People’s Liberation Army (PLA) can blockade, invade, and destroy the democracy on Taiwan, the CCP seeks to make the world an accomplice to Taiwan’s subjugation by harassing any government that confers any degree of marginal recognition, or defies the CCP’s “One China Principle” diktat that there is no free nation of Taiwan. For United States President Donald Trump’s upcoming May 14, 2026 visit to China, the CCP’s top wish has nothing to do with Trump’s ongoing dismantling of the CCP’s Axis of Evil. The CCP’s first demand is for Trump to cease US
RSS