Taipei schools do not have to remove statues of Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), the city’s Department of Education said last week, despite criticism from the Transitional Justice Commission.
Taipei Department of Education Deputy Commissioner Chen Su-hui (陳素慧) on Tuesday last week said that the city’s policy is to let each school and community decide what to do with the schools’ 64 statues.
Independent Taipei City Councilor Lin Ying-meng (林穎孟) on April 12 said the city was “going through the motions” of transitional justice by covering up slogans on the statues instead of removing them altogether.
Photo courtesy of Taipei City Councilor Lin Ying-meng
Transitional Justice Commission spokeswoman Yeh Hung-ling (葉虹靈) the following day said the city’s “total decontextualization” of the statues is inappropriate under the Act on Promoting Transitional Justice (促進轉型正義條例), which she said requires the city to “remove ... the permanency” of the statues.
The commission should have told the department that its policy was incorrect through official channels before going public, Chen said.
Removal is not the only method of dealing with authoritarian symbols, she said, citing a commission order from July 13 last year that had authorized the city to add text contextualizing the statues, transform them into public art or change the arrangements around the statues.
The city has since removed or obscured with potted plants the authoritarian inscriptions on 41 of the statues, which had text such as “savior of the nation” and “forever remember the leader.”
The department does not consider the 23 other statues authoritarian symbols because they do not bear authoritarian inscriptions or writings of any kind, she said.
“The Taipei City Government is not authoritarian and it will not order schools to dispose of the statues,” she said, adding that “social reconciliation is the true purpose of transitional justice.”
Schools that have decided to remove a statue would be able to do so after the department approves their budget, she said.
Five schools have decided to do so, and officials would help them relocate the statues to Chiang’s Shilin Residence in the city’s Shilin District (士林), she said.
However, Taipei Department of Cultural Affairs Deputy Commissioner Tien Wei (田瑋) said that Chiang’s former residence is a national heritage site, which means any plan to store statues there must receive approval from the Ministry of Culture.
An official at the Taipei Public Works Department’s Parks and Street Lights Office, which manages the Shilin Residence, said the agency needs time to review a plan to store or display the statues, citing concerns for the site’s structural integrity and landscape.
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