On the eve of the 54th anniversary of the 288 Incident, President Chen Shui-bian (
Chen urged the government to make the histories of the incident and records from the "White Terror" era (
"We should restore the real face of Taiwan's history, and bring about a just and fair society by way of researching these historical documents," Chen said yesterday while visiting Academia Historica.
PHOTO: CHEN CHENG-CHANG, TAIPEI TIMES
The government will today open a 10-day exhibition that will make public long-sealed documents from the 228 Incident archive.
"The 228 Incident is a very important event in Taiwan's post World War II history, and many historians have appealed to the government to release them," Chen said.
"The exhibition will make public parts of documents taken from more than 50,000 documents, which were collected from more than 40 institutes during the past half year," Chen said.
The 228 Incident was a brutal military crackdown on civilian protests that broke out on Feb. 28, 1947 against the KMT administration on Taiwan. The actual number of people killed and missing remains unknown, but some have placed the figure in the tens of thousands.
During the White Terror period from 1949 -- when the KMT forces lost the Chinese Civil War to the Communists -- to 1987, when martial law was lifted, thousands of Taiwan's most prominent citizens and leading intellectuals were dragged from their homes to be killed or vanish without explanation as the KMT waged war against Taiwan's Japanese-educated intelligentsia.
The president said he had also found many other important archives in Academia Historica's confidential storeroom, "Such as the archives of presidents Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) and Chiang Ching-kuo's (蔣經國), and even some about the history of Formosa Magazine," Chen said.
Members of the magazine advocated democratic reform and were arrested by the government for being involved in the Kaohsiung Incident of 1979.
"These precious documents record the real face of Taiwan's recent history and they should be made public because they belong to all of the country's people," the president added.
Chen stressed that the government must compile these documents and prevent them from being illegally destroyed.
"Academia Historica should immediately set up a complete archive to preserve these documents about the White Terror era and the Kaohsiung Incident, which will help historians learn about the real face of that age," Chen said.
One of Chen's campaign promises was to investigate some of the major events surrounding human rights issues and the democratic movement that occurred during previous KMT administrations, and make them public.
The Executive Yuan's Research, Development and Evaluation Commission was charged with implementing Chen's promise after his inauguration last May.
"The exhibition of 228 Incident archives is just the first step," said Lin Chia-cheng (
Japan has deployed long-range missiles in a southwestern region near China, the Japanese defense minister said yesterday, at a time when ties with Beijing are at their lowest in recent years. The missiles were installed in Kumamoto in the southern region of Kyushu, as Japan is attempting to shore up its military capacity as China steps up naval activity in the East China Sea. “Standoff defense capabilities enable us to counter the threat of enemy forces attempting to invade our country ... while ensuring the safety of our personnel,” Japanese Minister of Defense Shinjiro Koizumi said. “This is an extremely important initiative for
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) today accepted an invitation from Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to lead a delegation to China next month, saying she hopes to promote the peaceful development of cross-strait relations and bring stability to the Taiwan Strait. “I am grateful and happy to accept this invitation,” Cheng said in a statement from the KMT chairperson’s office. Cheng said she hopes both sides can work together to promote the peaceful development of cross-strait relations, enhance exchange and cooperation, bring stability to the Taiwan Strait and improve people’s livelihoods. At today's news conference, Cheng said any efforts to
MORE POPULAR: Taiwan Pass sales increased by 59 percent during the first quarter compared with the same period last year, the Tourism Administration said The Tourism Administration yesterday said that it has streamlined the Taiwan Pass, with two versions available for purchase beginning today. The tourism agency has made the pass available to international tourists since 2024, allowing them to access the high-speed rail, Taiwan Railway Corp services, four MRT systems and four Taiwan Tourist Shuttles. Previously, five types of Taiwan Pass were available, but some tourists have said that the offerings were too complicated. The agency said only two types of Taiwan Pass would be available, starting from a three-day pass with the high-speed rail and a three-day pass with Taiwan Railway Corp. The former costs NT$2,800
The nation’s fastest supercomputer, Nano 4 (晶創26), is scheduled to be launched in the third quarter, and would be used to train large language models in finance and national defense sectors, the National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC) said. The supercomputer, which would operate at about 86.05 petaflops, is being tested at a new cloud computing center in the Southern Taiwan Science Park in Tainan. The exterior of the server cabinet features chip circuitry patterns overlaid with a map of Taiwan, highlighting the nation’s central position in the semiconductor industry. The center also houses Taiwania 2, Taiwania 3, Forerunner 1 and
RSS