Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) yesterday said that his proposal to amend the Act Governing the Recovery of Damage of Individual Rights During the Period of Martial Law (戒嚴時期人民受損權利回復條例) aims to expand the legal basis for victims of the White Terror era and Martial Law period to claim compensation from the state.
Many of the cases were not limited to the Criminal Code and should the amendment be passed, people prosecuted for contravening of the now-defunct punishment of rebellion act and the espionage laws of the period of the communist rebellion would also be eligible to file for state compensation, Chiang said.
People who has received a presidential reinstatement of integrity certificate, or those whose guilty verdict was overturned through the Act on Promoting Transitional Justice (促進轉型正義條例) would also be eligible, Chiang said.
Photo: CNA
According to the draft, if the person has passed away, their descendants or legally designated inheritor in Taiwan may also ask for their assets to be returned, he said.
If the assets are unable to be returned, or cannot be returned in their original state, the claimant may request that the government pay an appropriate sum instead, he said.
If the draft is passed, the official name of the act would be changed to the restoration of individual rights under the autocratic rule period act, Chiang said.
Chiang said he has always supported openly discussing the events of the White Terror era and Martial Law period, and that he expressed such sentiments when Formosan Political Prisoners’ Association honorary director-general Tsai Kuan-yu (蔡寬裕) visited the KMT’s Legislative Yuan caucus in 2017.
When the Legislative Yuan passed the Act on Promoting Transitional Justice on Dec. 5, 2017, Chiang said that he supported Article 6, which was proposed by the Democratic Progressive Party to redress judicial wrongs.
The article is aimed at facing history and restoring the truth, which is the first step Taiwanese must take to putting their past behind them, he said.
Chiang denied accusations that he was making the proposal to gain support for his bid to run as the party’s candidate for Taipei mayor next year.
Many of the victims are old and he wishes to expedite government compensation efforts, he said.
The great-grandson of former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), Chiang Wan-an said that he had not spoken with his father, former KMT vice chairman John Chiang (蔣孝嚴), about the amendment.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching