Premier Chen Chien-jen (陳建仁) yesterday unveiled a monument at the Executive Yuan in Taipei, officially designating it a “historical site of injustice” to commemorate the victims killed during the 228 Incident of 1947.
The Incident refers to the indiscriminate killing of a person in a crowd on Feb. 27, 1947, and the machine-gunning of a resulting protest at what is now the Executive Yuan by the then-Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government the next day. Estimates of the number of eventual deaths vary from 10,000 to more than 30,000.
The Incident was closely followed by the White Terror era in Taiwan.
Photo: CNA
Chen said 42 sites have been identified nationwide where past injustice had taken place and work is under way to preserve them.
“It is time for us to recognize rights abuses and atrocities by past governments. By restoration and facing up to history, we can go on to sustain peace and justice for all,” Chen said.
He said that Article 5 of the Act on Promoting Transitional Justice (促進轉型正義條例) states that “places where the rulers engaged in large-scale human rights abuses during the period of authoritarian rule shall be preserved or rebuilt, and plans shall be made for their designation as historic sites” was the basis for the project.
“In a few days, it is Feb. 28, the day to commemorate what happened at this place. Currently it is the Executive Yuan compound, but 77 years ago in 1947 it was the Taiwan Provincial Administrative Executive Office,” Chen said.
“This was one of several important sites of the 228 Incident. Today, we are unveiling this monument to pay respect to the families of those who lost their lives here. Without their sacrifice and also the efforts of democracy advocates, Taiwanese today would not have freedom, democracy, rule of law and human rights protections,” he said.
Taiwan 228 Care Association director Wang Wen-hong (王文宏) was invited to attend as a guest of honor. Wang’s father, an elected Kaohsiung city councilor, was killed when trying to mediate between local residents and KMT officials during the Incident.
In his address, Wang praised the government’s efforts on transitional justice and expressed the hope that Chen would facilitate work to identify all “historic sites of injustice” relating to the Incident and the White Terror era before the new president takes over on May 20.
Wang also reiterated the demands of familiy members of the victims that the government complete transitional justice by removing the giant bronze statue of Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) at the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in Taipei.
“Taiwan does not need to have a memorial hall to Chiang, the military dictator who was responsible for mass killings and atrocities against the people of Taiwan,” he said.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS