Relatives of 228 Incident victims yesterday called on the government to follow through on its proposal to rename the Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) Memorial Hall and remove its authoritarian symbols as part of efforts to address past human rights violations.
Following the Ministry of Culture’s announcement on Saturday that it is working on a bill to reinvent the hall — that might rename the Taipei landmark and remove Chiang’s statue from it — a number of families of the victims of the incident held an impromptu news conference at the hall yesterday to express support for the changes.
Chiang was primarily responsible for the mass casualties of the 228 Massacre, but the former president has been “deified and enshrined in a massive imperial tomb,” which is an insult to those killed and their relatives, Memorial Foundation of 228 chief executive officer Yang Chen-long (楊振隆) said.
“The ubiquity of Chiang statues is unbearable for families of the victims, who know perfectly well Chiang’s role in the death of their relatives,” Yang said.
It is imperative to cease the glorification of Chiang so he can be judged for what he did, he said.
“High-school students donning Nazi costumes [in Hsinchu City last year] sparked international criticism, and we hope the same standards are applied to [the worship of Chiang],” Yang said.
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) criticized the ministry, saying that the changes would cause social division, but the nation cannot redress the consequences of the KMT regime without bringing about transitional justice, he said.
Ou Yang Hui-mei (歐陽煇美) said her father, Ou Yang Wen (歐陽文) — a student of renowned painter Chen Cheng-po (陳澄波) — was wrongfully imprisoned for 12 years for participating in protests.
She criticized the decades-long public commemoration of Chiang despite the brutality of the massacre, and said the memorial hall could be repurposed into an exhibition center to display artworks created by victims and their relatives.
The government has not identified any perpetrators of the massacre although research published by the foundation in 2006 found Chiang primarily responsible for the massacre, foundation standing director Lin Li-tsai (林黎彩) said.
“There are only victims [of the 228 Incident], but there is no perpetrator. Conflicts cannot be resolved without historical responsibility being understood,” Lin said.
Lin urged the immediate passage of a law on transitional justice, which would lay the legal groundwork for seeking the truth of the Incident and holding Chiang and his accomplices accountable for the massacre.
Lin’s father was killed at a military base in Kaohsiung without a trial, she said.
Foundation standing director Lee Hui-sheng (李慧生), whose grandfather went missing during the Incident, said the removal of merchandise associated with Chiang from the hall was justified.
The commercialization of products associated with Chiang hurts the families of victims, they said.
DEMOGRAPHICS: Robotics is the most promising answer to looming labor woes, the long-term care system and national contingency response, an official said Taiwan is to launch a five-year plan to boost the robotics industry in a bid to address labor shortages stemming from a declining and aging population, the Executive Yuan said yesterday. The government approved the initiative, dubbed the Smart Robotics Industry Promotion Plan, via executive order, senior officials told a post-Cabinet meeting news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s population decline would strain the economy and the nation’s ability to care for vulnerable and elderly people, said Peter Hong (洪樂文), who heads the National Science and Technology Council’s (NSTC) Department of Engineering and Technologies. Projections show that the proportion of Taiwanese 65 or older would
Nvidia Corp yesterday unveiled its new high-speed interconnect technology, NVLink Fusion, with Taiwanese application-specific IC (ASIC) designers Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯) and MediaTek Inc (聯發科) among the first to adopt the technology to help build semi-custom artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure for hyperscalers. Nvidia has opened its technology to outside users, as hyperscalers and cloud service providers are building their own cost-effective AI chips, or accelerators, used in AI servers by leveraging ASIC firms’ designing capabilities to reduce their dependence on Nvidia. Previously, NVLink technology was only available for Nvidia’s own AI platform. “NVLink Fusion opens Nvidia’s AI platform and rich ecosystem for
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it is building nine new advanced wafer manufacturing and packaging factories this year, accelerating its expansion amid strong demand for high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) applications. The chipmaker built on average five factories per year from 2021 to last year and three from 2017 to 2020, TSMC vice president of advanced technology and mask engineering T.S. Chang (張宗生) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “We are quickening our pace even faster in 2025. We plan to build nine new factories, including eight wafer fabrication plants and one advanced
‘WORLD’S LOSS’: Taiwan’s exclusion robs the world of the benefits it could get from one of the foremost practitioners of disease prevention and public health, Minister Chiu said Taiwan should be allowed to join the World Health Assembly (WHA) as an irreplaceable contributor to global health and disease prevention efforts, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said yesterday. He made the comment at a news conference in Taipei, hours before a Taiwanese delegation was to depart for Geneva, Switzerland, seeking to meet with foreign representatives for a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the WHA, the WHO’s annual decisionmaking meeting, which would be held from Monday next week to May 27. As of yesterday, Taiwan had yet to receive an invitation. Taiwan has much to offer to the international community’s