The Transitional Justice Commission yesterday presented a sixth batch of declassified Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) records at a forum in Taipei, with the contents showing abuse of power and violations of human rights extending up until the year 2000.
The batch contained 77,000 files, mainly records of citizens targeted by the KMT, Commission Chairwoman Yang Tsui (楊翠) said, adding that most of them came from the archives of the Taiwan Provincial Police Division, the forerunner of the National Police Agency.
“This forum focusing on the secret surveillance of family members of suspected political dissidents and communist sympathizers during the White Terror era shows that they monitored the entire family, even after the victim was executed or imprisoned,” Yang said.
Photo: Lin Cheng-kung, Taipei Times
Commission researcher Chen Yu-chi (陳昱齊) said that the records indicated that the KMT government had at most in one year placed 15,000 citizens under constant surveillance, and that figure later decreased to about 8,000 to 7,000 in a year.
Besides the Taiwan Provincial Police Division, the other agencies in KMT’s surveillance network included the Taiwan Garrison Command, the Ministry of Justice’s Investigation Bureau, the Political Warfare Bureau and the KMT Central Committee’s mainland China affairs department, Chen said.
The KMT’s surveillance network constantly monitored people suspected of being political dissidents or communist sympathizers up until Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) of the Democratic Progressive Party was elected president in 2000.
The family of Chung Hao-tung (鍾浩東) attended the forum. Chung was a high-school principal who was arrested and tortured in 1949 on suspicion of being a communist, and later sentenced to death and executed in October 1950.
Chung’s granddaughter, Chung Yin-chen (鍾吟真), said that almost all of her family and their friends were monitored by the KMT, as the list of names took up three pages in the records and even included a friend who only visited her father a few times.
“My father’s elder brother began farming in a remote mountain village, and they put him under surveillance. The KMT’s state apparatus clearly used huge resources ... to monitor suspected political dissidents,” she said. “Their methodology was to show no mercy, to kill 100 innocent people in order not to miss one real guilty person.”
Huang Wen-gong (黃溫恭), a dentist in Kaohsiung’s Lujhu District (路竹), was executed by firing squad in May 1953 under direct orders from then-president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) because he was suspected of being a communist.
His oldest daughter, Huang Ling-lan (黃鈴蘭), said: “I recently saw the declassified file on my father and my family. It was quite a shock to find that they had placed me under constant surveillance after had I reached the age of 18, and it had very detailed records on me.”
Huang Wen-gong’s second daughter, Huang Chun-lan (黃春蘭), said: “I came to attend this forum, and took the Taipei subway system which passed by the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall Station, a monument dedicated to an evil dictator. When will justice prevail? When will the government make changes to this memorial?”
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
BEIJING’S ‘PAWN’: ‘We, as Chinese, should never forget our roots, history, culture,’ Want Want Holdings general manager Tsai Wang-ting said at a summit in China The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday condemned Want Want China Times Media Group (旺旺中時媒體集團) for making comments at the Cross-Strait Chinese Culture Summit that it said have damaged Taiwan’s sovereignty, adding that it would investigate if the group had colluded with China in the matter and contravened cross-strait regulations. The council issued a statement after Want Want Holdings (旺旺集團有限公司) general manager Tsai Wang-ting (蔡旺庭), the third son of the group’s founder, Tsai Eng-meng (蔡衍明), said at the summit last week that the group originated in “Chinese Taiwan,” and has developed and prospered in “the motherland.” “We, as Chinese, should never
INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the
‘A SURVIVAL QUESTION’: US officials have been urging the opposition KMT and TPP not to block defense spending, especially the special defense budget, an official said The US plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan to a level exceeding US President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the nation, two US officials said on condition of anonymity. If US arms sales do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to Taiwan. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship. The officials said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taiwan over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of them saying
RSS