The transitional justice implications of the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall (中正紀念堂) is a perennial issue in Taiwan.
Minister of National Defense Wellington Koo (顧立雄) and the Ministry of Culture recently stated that the ceremonial duties performed by honor guards are to be relocated from inside the hall to Liberty Square in a similar format as is done at the National Martyrs’ Shrine (忠烈祠).
The fact that the sole statue in the hall is a huge bronze sculpture in the likeness of Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) makes it difficult not to directly associate Chiang with the honor guards and their sentry duty while the ceremony continues to take place inside the hall, which will remain an issue of transitional justice.
However, the crux of this issue is that honor guards do not need to stand on duty in deference to Chiang. Instead of only featuring Chiang, another possibility is to install statues of the late presidents whose leadership marked the nation’s transition from dictatorship to democracy.
These would include statues (of the same size as Chiang’s) of Republic of China (ROC) founder Sun Yat-sen (孫逸仙), former presidents Yen Chia-kan (嚴家淦), Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) and Lee Teng-hui (李登輝), and subsequent and future heads of state, presuming of course that they do not object to having their statue in the hall.
The enormous statue of Chiang could be moved to the Chiang Kai-shek Cihu Statue Park (慈湖蔣公銅像公園) in Taoyuan’s Dasi District (大溪), where other statues of the former dictator have been relocated.
Moreover, the name of the hall could be changed from the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall to Democracy Memorial Hall, and honor guards can remain stationed in the hall, working in shifts, standing guard in dedication to the statues of the late leaders, rather than Chiang alone. This can truly embody transitional justice.
Keeping the ceremonial duties inside the hall would save the guards and visitors from having to be exposed to the elements, whatever the weather.
At present, during the ceremony, the incoming honor guard emerges majestically, boots stomping and clicking together, guns spinning and clacking on the floor.
The ceremony showcases the nation’s military discipline. If the ceremony is relocated outside, the sounds would be dissipated and the sight of the honor guards would get swamped by the spacious Liberty Square, to the detriment of their imposing manner.
Would the ceremony need to be canceled because of the rain, or indeed the searing sun or strong winds? Certainly, the duty would be made more demanding, as a result of those unpleasant and unpredictable conditions.
The guard ceremony has made the memorial hall a popular tourist attraction in Taipei, and international visitors who have watched the performance come away with a good impression of the standards of military training. If the ceremony is moved from inside the hall to Liberty Square, making it look very similar to the ceremony at the National Martyrs’ Shrine, visitors would be less likely to want to go and watch both.
The exact date of the relocation has yet to be decided, so the authorities have the option of launching a trial run to see how people respond.
Su Ming-tong is a retired civil servant.
Translated by Chen Chi-huang
The narrative surrounding Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s attendance at last week’s Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit — where he held hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin and chatted amiably with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) — was widely framed as a signal of Modi distancing himself from the US and edging closer to regional autocrats. It was depicted as Modi reacting to the levying of high US tariffs, burying the hatchet over border disputes with China, and heralding less engagement with the Quadrilateral Security dialogue (Quad) composed of the US, India, Japan and Australia. With Modi in China for the
The Jamestown Foundation last week published an article exposing Beijing’s oil rigs and other potential dual-use platforms in waters near Pratas Island (Dongsha Island, 東沙島). China’s activities there resembled what they did in the East China Sea, inside the exclusive economic zones of Japan and South Korea, as well as with other South China Sea claimants. However, the most surprising element of the report was that the authors’ government contacts and Jamestown’s own evinced little awareness of China’s activities. That Beijing’s testing of Taiwanese (and its allies) situational awareness seemingly went unnoticed strongly suggests the need for more intelligence. Taiwan’s naval
A report by the US-based Jamestown Foundation on Tuesday last week warned that China is operating illegal oil drilling inside Taiwan’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) off the Taiwan-controlled Pratas Island (Dongsha, 東沙群島), marking a sharp escalation in Beijing’s “gray zone” tactics. The report said that, starting in July, state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corp installed 12 permanent or semi-permanent oil rig structures and dozens of associated ships deep inside Taiwan’s EEZ about 48km from the restricted waters of Pratas Island in the northeast of the South China Sea, islands that are home to a Taiwanese garrison. The rigs not only typify
A large part of the discourse about Taiwan as a sovereign, independent nation has centered on conventions of international law and international agreements between outside powers — such as between the US, UK, Russia, the Republic of China (ROC) and Japan at the end of World War II, and between the US and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) since recognition of the PRC as the sole representative of China at the UN. Internationally, the narrative on the PRC and Taiwan has changed considerably since the days of the first term of former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) of the Democratic
RSS