National Chengchi University yesterday passed a motion at an administrative affairs meeting that called for statues of Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) to be removed as part of efforts to promote human rights and transitional justice.
The decision was in response to protests last year, when students plastered a statue of Chiang with fliers containing the names of people killed in the 228 Incident and called for the statue’s removal.
The university was established in Nanjing, China, in 1927 to train people to serve in the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and was moved to Taiwan when the party fled China.
Photo: Huang Yao-cheng, Taipei Times
Chiang was president of the institution from its establishment until 1947 and was given the honorary title of “perpetual president emeritus.”
Two large bronze statues of Chiang were erected at the university: one in a sitting position in the library and one on horseback at the rear of the school’s campus.
Hsu Tzu-wei (徐子為), head of the university’s graduate students association, said that after last year’s protests by the Wildfire Front student group, university officials repeatedly delayed the removal of the statues.
Opponents said at the meeting that removing the statues would hurt the school’s integrity and international reputation, adding that Chiang’s contributions should be discussed alongside his mistakes.
Removing the statues would be an important first step toward transitional justice, Hsu said, adding that the 228 Incident and the subsequent White Terror era were the direct result of Chiang’s authoritarian rule.
As some of the university’s students are descendants of White Terror victims, honoring Chiang with statues is a second attack on victims’ families, he added.
The four-hour meeting ended with 52 of 68 votes in favor of the statues’ removal, Graduate Institute of Development Studies professor Lee Yeau-tarn (李酉潭) said.
Lee said he would lead a team of seven other professors and three student representatives to discuss how to move forward with relocating the statues to an “appropriate location.”
National Taiwan University history professor Hua Yih-fen (花亦芬) lauded the decision, saying that educators should seek to espouse the values of freedom and democracy, adding that allowing the statues to remain at the university would run counter to those values.
“Fortunately, National Chengchi University was willing to follow sound advice,” she said, adding that transitional justice involves more than just judicial and political elements.
“The removal of the statues honoring Chiang was long overdue,” National Chengchi University associate professor Liu Hung-en (劉宏恩) said.
Regardless of one’s evaluation of Chiang as a political leader, it is absurd to have a president’s statue on campus that is more than three times taller than a person’s height, he said.
If the statues were meant to honor the university’s founder, then every institution should have similar statues, Liu said, adding that the university’s association with a particular party is a source of frustration for many students and professors.
“If it is not a KMT school, why are statues from the period of authoritarian KMT rule kept?” Liu asked.
“What is the reason behind keeping the statue of someone who killed so many people?” asked one student, who declined to be named.
CHIP WAR: The new restrictions are expected to cut off China’s access to Taiwan’s technologies, materials and equipment essential to building AI semiconductors Taiwan has blacklisted Huawei Technologies Co (華為) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯), dealing another major blow to the two companies spearheading China’s efforts to develop cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) chip technologies. The Ministry of Economic Affairs’ International Trade Administration has included Huawei, SMIC and several of their subsidiaries in an update of its so-called strategic high-tech commodities entity list, the latest version on its Web site showed on Saturday. It did not publicly announce the change. Other entities on the list include organizations such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda, as well as companies in China, Iran and elsewhere. Local companies need
CRITICISM: It is generally accepted that the Straits Forum is a CCP ‘united front’ platform, and anyone attending should maintain Taiwan’s dignity, the council said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it deeply regrets that former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) echoed the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) “one China” principle and “united front” tactics by telling the Straits Forum that Taiwanese yearn for both sides of the Taiwan Strait to move toward “peace” and “integration.” The 17th annual Straits Forum yesterday opened in Xiamen, China, and while the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) local government heads were absent for the first time in 17 years, Ma attended the forum as “former KMT chairperson” and met with Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Chairman Wang Huning (王滬寧). Wang
CROSS-STRAIT: The MAC said it barred the Chinese officials from attending an event, because they failed to provide guarantees that Taiwan would be treated with respect The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) on Friday night defended its decision to bar Chinese officials and tourism representatives from attending a tourism event in Taipei next month, citing the unsafe conditions for Taiwanese in China. The Taipei International Summer Travel Expo, organized by the Taiwan Tourism Exchange Association, is to run from July 18 to 21. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokeswoman Zhu Fenglian (朱鳳蓮) on Friday said that representatives from China’s travel industry were excluded from the expo. The Democratic Progressive Party government is obstructing cross-strait tourism exchange in a vain attempt to ignore the mainstream support for peaceful development
DEFENSE: The US would assist Taiwan in developing a new command and control system, and it would be based on the US-made Link-22, a senior official said The Ministry of National Defense is to propose a special budget to replace the military’s currently fielded command and control system, bolster defensive resilience and acquire more attack drones, a senior defense official said yesterday. The budget would be presented to the legislature in August, the source said on condition of anonymity. Taiwan’s decade-old Syun An (迅安, “Swift Security”) command and control system is a derivative of Lockheed Martin’s Link-16 developed under Washington’s auspices, they said. The Syun An system is difficult to operate, increasingly obsolete and has unresolved problems related to integrating disparate tactical data across the three branches of the military,
RSS