Historians and human rights groups recently asked the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government to put more effort into finding out the truth behind murders and other incidents that occurred during the martial-law era under the former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government.
They also urged leaders of the KMT and its ally the People First Party (PFP) -- some of whom were high-ranking officials during the martial-law era -- to tell the truth in order to provide comfort to the relatives of people involved in the incidents.
"The dictatorial era has been over for more than a decade and Taiwan has experienced democratization," said Peter Huang (
Bruised and battered
"Moreover, those who should take responsibility for those incidents have neither been identified nor punished," Huang said.
Yesterday was the 23rd anniversary of the death of Chen Wen-chen (陳文成), a dissident who arrived in Taiwan on July 2, 1981 from the US to visit his family. His bruised and battered body was discovered on the campus of National Taiwan University after he had been detained and interrogated by the Taiwan Garrison General Headquarters.
Some human rights advocates and human rights lawyers attended a conference Friday to discuss achieving justice. They also held a memorial for Chen yesterday.
White terror
Participants mentioned several well-known incidents, including the murders of former DPP party leader Lin I-hsiung's (
"Some core members of the former KMT authority are still active in politics, especially KMT Chairman Lien Chan (
"They made a big fuss to the international community and even urged the US government to find out the `truth' of the assassination attempt on the president and vice president, but those two people were the ones that refused to assist the international community in investigating the truth behind Chen Wen-chen's death," Lee said.
"Every time the grassroots -- the Taiwanese people -- ask for redress concerning these historical incidents, members of the former KMT authority and even many members of the media just say that we should forget those historical tragedies and not arouse ethnic conflict," Lee said.
Kenneth Chiu (
"The relatives may not be interested in punishing anyone. However, they still expect to know what exactly happened, and we hope that the DPP government can enhance its efforts in determining the truth," Chiu said.
President Chen Shui-bian (
No revenge
However, when the two were asked last year if they would help make public unclassified documents concerning incidents that occurred under totalitarian rule -- especially their own case -- both said that they would not take advantage of Chen's being head of state to put pressure on the judiciary system.
"The real meaning of our promise of judiciary reform is not to punish those who organized the conspiracy or who executed the order to hurt us," Wu said.
"Instead of focusing on revenge, the mission we should carry out is to improve the efficiency and quality of all judges and prosecutors, and ultimately build people's trust in the judiciary system," Chen Shui-bian said.
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