Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) on Thursday said that the party must face the mistakes it made during the White Terror era with honesty and humility, adding that “history cannot be forgotten.”
Chiang made the comments during a tour of the National Human Rights Museum in New Taipei City to commemorate International Human Rights Day and the 41st anniversary of the Kaohsiung Incident.
The 48-year-old Chiang was just 15 when martial law was lifted by then-president Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) on July 15, 1987, and is at least two decades younger than prior chairs of the party responsible for martial law and the White Terror.
That age gap perhaps makes it easier for him to come out with statements like Thursday’s, but he is not the first KMT chair to call for the party to face up to its past.
In 1995, then-president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝), who was also KMT chairman, became the nation’s first president to publicly apologize for the 228 Incident, and he vowed to publicize the truth behind the events of 228 and the White Terror era.
On Oct. 14, 2007, during a visit to Green Island (綠島) to see the prisons where so many White Terror victims wasted years of their lives, then-KMT presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) apologized to victims of political persecution and vowed to investigate several prominent cases of alleged political persecution once elected.
Ma — who had stepped down as KMT chair a few months before the visit, but who would become chairman again in 2009 — made similar promises once he was in the Presidential Office, several times reiterating a comment he made during that trip: “The KMT is choosing to face history with honesty, no matter how embarrassing the past may be for us.”
In practice, the KMT has not only fallen short of pledges to face up to its history, but also portrayed itself as the persecuted victim of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administrations, be it the current one or that of former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁).
It challenged the constitutionality of the Act Governing the Handling of Ill-gotten Properties by Political Parties and Their Affiliate Organizations (政黨及其附隨組織不當取得財產處理條例) and the Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee before the Council of Grand Justices, but lost.
The KMT has battled the assets settlement committee’s investigations at every stage, just as it has battled to restrict access by the Transitional Justice Commission and the National Archives Administration to its archives, requiring its lawyers to be present when party records are examined.
It has repeatedly alleged that efforts to document and expose what happened during the White Terror era are “political persecution in the name of transitional justice,” and that its members and officials who challenge such efforts run the risk of becoming political prisoners.
KMT lawmakers and officials have condemned the National Communications Commission over its review of CTi News’ license renewal application, accusing it of carrying out a new “White Terror” by denying to renew the license.
The party’s flippant use of such terms as “political oppression,” “censorship” and “White Terror” when it criticizes the DPP brings into doubt its purported repentance for actions committed during martial law and its authoritarian regime.
The same day that he visited the National Human Rights Museum and said that “history cannot be forgotten,” Johnny Chiang said that criticism of the party has often come with “misunderstandings and distortions.”
The trouble is that the KMT’s distortions of history are hampering the nation’s efforts to move forward, because Taiwanese refuse to forget their history.
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