An independence campaigner who threw congee at the main statue at Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in Taipei has been fined NT$6,000 and could be charged with contravening the Social Order Maintenance Act (社會秩序維護法).
Chilly Chen (陳峻涵), director of 908 Taiwan Republic Campaign, on Wednesday made his way to the hall’s 6.3m-tall bronze statue, stepped over the cordon and tossed two plastic bags containing what he said was “rice porridge with squid” at the statue as fellow group members filmed him.
“Chiang Kai-shek [蔣介石] is an evil mass murderer,” Chen reportedly shouted into a microphone several times before police officers tackled him and took him away.
Officials said that Chen was taken to a police station on Renai Road for questioning, transferred to Zhongzheng First Precinct to provide a statement and released in the evening.
The memorial hall was yesterday closed and barricaded, with police barring access on all sides to pre-empt incidents during the national commemoration of the 228 Incident.
“It is absurd that there are still so many Chiang statues across Taiwan and that people continue to worship this mass murderer,” Chen said in an interview. “My action was a call for the removal of all such statues and was meant as a reminder to the public not to forget the painful lessons of the 228 Incident.”
Chen said that prosecutors plan to charge him with breaking the Social Order Maintenance Act and that he was released after Taipei police served him with a NT$6,000 fine, which he had not paid.
The rice porridge with squid was a reference to the 228 Incident, Chen said, adding that it was the last meal of Taiwan Provincial Assembly member Lin Lien-tsung (林連宗), who on March 9, 1947, was at lawyer Lee Jui-feng’s (李瑞峰) house when soldiers barged in and the two men, along with Lee’s brother.
The men were reportedly shot dead as the then-Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) regime rounded up Taiwanese intellectuals and local leaders as part of a crackdown following the Incident.
In a statement released through his organization, Chen said that President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) must push harder for transitional justice and prioritize the removal of Chiang statues.
The statues represent the KMT’s former authoritarian rule over Taiwan and the White Terror era, during which it killed and tortured innocent people, Chen said.
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