The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) must face the mistakes it made during the White Terror era with honesty and humility, KMT Chairman Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) said yesterday, as he became the first KMT chairman to visit the National Human Rights Museum in New Taipei City.
The museum, inaugurated in 2018, has two campuses in New Taipei City’s Jingmei District (景美) and on Green Island (綠島).
Chiang made the trip to commemorate International Human Rights Day, as well as the 41st anniversary of the Kaohsiung Incident — also known as the Formosa Incident — when the then-KMT government cracked down on a demonstration organized by Formosa Magazine, leading to the arrest of many prominent democracy activists.
Photo: Weng Yu-huang, Taipei Times
Museum director Chen Chun-hung (陳俊宏) accompanied the chairman as he toured the courtroom where Kaohsiung Incident detainees were tried.
Photographs of people who would become Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) leaders standing trial dotted the walls, including photographs of former DPP chairmen Huang Hsin-chieh (黃信介) and Shih Ming-te (施明德), and Control Yuan President Chen Chu (陳菊).
Chiang also visited the museum’s wall of plaques memorializing victims of political persecution, where he lingered over the name of his great uncle, Chiang Han-chin (江漢津).
Photo: Weng Yu-huang, Taipei Times
Many people were persecuted for speaking freely during the White Terror, even someone from his own family, he said.
Chiang Han-chin, his grandfather’s cousin, was imprisoned from 1950 to 1975 before passing away in 1993, he said.
Seeing his name on the plaque filled him with grief and regret, and taught him an important lesson, Johnny Chiang said.
The chairman said he came to the museum to witness and reflect on this period in the nation’s past.
“History cannot be forgotten,” he said, adding that transitional justice depends upon truth, consolation and reconciliation.
The KMT has an obligation to be humble and reflective for the sake of the families of victims of political persecution, he said.
All information related to the White Terror era must be declassified and the truth revealed, as only then can reconciliation follow, he added.
“There is no history that cannot be declassified, no truth that cannot be revealed,” Johnny Chiang said.
These martyrs sacrificed themselves and their families to craft Taiwan’s democracy, he said.
It is from this stage in history that Taiwan’s flourishing democracy emerged, Johnny Chiang said, adding that he visited to reflect on this past and cherish the free and open society Taiwan now enjoys.
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