The Transitional Justice Commission yesterday released its second short film on the then-Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government’s use of extensive intelligence networks to spy on students during the authoritarian period.
Titled Vindication (反白), the film, which was uploaded to YouTube (https://youtu.be/Iho3877zTVM) tells the story of a KMT informant who was forced into the role, the commission said, adding that it was intended to portray the complexity of the KMT’s hold over society at the time.
The 17-minute film follows Not My Diary (不是自己寫的日記), which was released by the commission on Wednesday.
Vindication was directed by Lo Ging-zim (羅景壬) and adapted from historical accounts by novelist Hung Tzu-ying (洪茲盈). It was filmed at the Jing-Mei White Terror Memorial Park and tells a story adapted from real events affecting two medical students in the 1980s, the commission said.
The film’s protagonists, Wang Wen-yi (王文義) and Lee Ming-shun (李明順), are classmates and good friends. Lee tells Wang that his father is a political prisoner, but he thinks his father has done nothing wrong.
Wang is pressed by the institute’s military instructor to become a KMT informant. As Wang provides information about Lee to the military instructor — some of it untrue — Lee begins to encounter trouble.
The film cuts to Wang on a hospital bed 30 years later, sick and close to death. He tells Lee about his actions.
Many similar examples of students compelled to spy on their friends were discovered by researchers, the commission said, adding that family members of those targeted would also have come under pressure.
Short films are a suitable medium to share the commission’s findings, as the scenarios are easy to understand, it said.
Informants would have been tormented over informing on close friends, but would have had little choice, while the military instructors also would have faced pressure from their superiors, it said.
Hopefully, the films convey the complexity of the situations, it said.
While documents provided important evidence, they had to be scrutinized, as record keepers would have been biased, the commission said, adding that personal accounts such as the ones that informed the short films were important to a fuller picture of history.
The commission said that it would meet with surviving informants and those they informed on over the next six months to corroborate documents in its possession.
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