Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) officials yesterday called on Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman-elect Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) to reveal all assets obtained by the party through abuse of government power and other illegal means as a probe into a controversial land deal in rural Taipei began.
DPP spokesman Ruan Jhao-syong (阮昭雄) said that the KMT’s National Development and Research Institute on an 8,300 ping (2.74 hectare) plot of land in Taipei’s Muzha (木柵) area was acquired in 1964 from local resident Yeh Chung-chuan (葉中川) during authoritarian one-party rule of Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石).
Ruan, citing accusations in a lawsuit filed by Yeh’s family members, said that the “KMT took over the land through coercion and threats against private citizens.”
“It happened during the Martial Law era under the party’s autocratic rule,” Ruan said. “Therefore, we urge KMT chairman-elect Wu to put an end to the party’s ownership of ill-gotten assets.”
“Wu was elected KMT chairman recently after he declared that he would lead the party with a new style and mindset,” Ruan said. “So we ask Wu to make a clean break from the past by making a full disclosure of the party’s many ill-gotten assets and return them to their rightful owners.”
Most Taiwanese demand that political parties make full assessments and settle any ill-gotten assets, he said.
“The KMT should stop resisting this process by hiding information and refusing to cooperate on the matter,” he said.
“The KMT in this regard is worse than the mobsters,” Ruan said, adding that at least gangsters abide by their code of honor, compensating the owner of property they take.
“In the case of the Yeh family, the KMT used coercion and threats to force the family off their land without any compensation and later sold the land to a developer, making a large profit,” he said.
The plot of land was bought by the KMT in 1964 from Yeh, whose family in 2007 sued the party over the acquisition.
Yeh’s family bought the land in 1939, but the Japanese colonial army built a prisoner-of-war camp on it.
The land was later taken over by the KMT after it retreated to Taiwan following its loss in the Chinese Civil War.
In 1961, seeing he was unlikely to have the land returned to him by the KMT, Yeh reportedly offered to sell the land for NT$200 per ping, or NT$364,004 in total, but the party declined.
Yeh said he was visited in 1962 by four armed men — who arrived in two military jeeps — led by a KMT official and a local township official who invited him to “have a cup of tea” to discuss the land sale.
However, a handgun was pulled out and pointed at Yeh’s head during the meeting, Yeh’s wife, Yeh Chang Shu-chin (葉張淑津) told a court hearing in 2007.
Facing such threats by the KMT, the Yeh family had no choice but to sign a contract to sell the land to the party for NT$191,100, court testimony showed.
The KMT transferred the land into its name and deposited NT$19,000 — about one-10th of the amount in the contract — with the courts, but Yeh Chung-chuan refused to accept the money and the KMT took over ownership without paying the family, it said.
The family sued the KMT in 2007 and the Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee in March reopened the investigation into the case, with a hearing scheduled for next month.
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