In November last year, after investigating the China Youth Corps, the Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee defined the corps as an affiliate organization of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
In July, the committee found that the corps had unlawfully obtained 61 buildings and plots of land, as well as nearly NT$1.4 billion (US$43.5 million) in financial assets.
The committee ordered the corps to transfer these assets to the state and pay NT$240.57 million in compensation for properties that cannot be returned to their rightful owners because they were sold to a third party.
Corps chairman Ger Yeong-kuang (葛永光) said that the corps has many “volunteers” who are important businesspeople and politicians, and on Sunday the corps held the only large-scale protest that has taken place during this year’s election campaign period.
KMT Culture and Communications Committee deputy director-general Lin Chia-hsing (林家興) expressed support for the corps, saying that there would soon be a surge in resentment against the ruling Democratic Progressive Party.
Lin’s comments show that a problem for the corps is a problem for the KMT, proving how closely the two organizations are related.
Since the period of authoritarian rule under the KMT regime, the corps has been an affiliate organization of the KMT. As such, its personnel, business and finances have been dominated by the KMT.
The report on the Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee’s investigation includes so much evidence of this that the corps can hardly deny it. Instead, it has resorted to using populist mobilization to challenge the committee.
This move reveals the deep-set political character of the corps.
Ger said that “transitional justice should move toward reconciliation,” and accused the committee of “turning transitional justice into hatred.”
In the name of “reconciliation,” the corps is trying to avoid talking about its many past failures and malpractices, while obscuring the fact that, for many years, the KMT used state resources to support the corps’ operations.
This crafty narrative is tantamount to moving the goalposts. It stems from the tendency that many people have, when talking about the purpose of promoting transitional justice, to jump straight to the aspect of “reconciliation.” They overlook that the goals of transitional justice also include truth-seeking and reparations, which are just as important as trying to achieve social reconciliation.
If reconciliation is overemphasized while truth is underemphasized, affiliate organizations of the former party-state can easily be allowed to take advantage by using the word “reconciliation” to evade accountability and prevent transitional justice from really being achieved.
Before people talk about reconciliation, they should bear in mind that only through dialogue based on truth can the goal of social reconciliation ever be reached.
Chen Jyun-yu is an executive director of the New Taiwan Peace Foundation.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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