The Transitional Justice Commission yesterday said it is recommending legal amendments that would hold perpetrators of White Terror offences accountable for their actions.
The amendments being mulled are to include the revocation of government stipends and commendations, and that a draft would be completed by May next year, the commission told a news conference in Taipei.
The commission is to probe into declassified national security archives to identify perpetrators, especially the then-heads of state apparatuses who can be charged or disciplined for crimes, commission spokeswoman Chen Yu-fan (陳雨凡) said.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
This means those accused of committing crimes would face justice in court, while the internal affairs units of the civil service would deal with public servants whose alleged misdeeds did not meet the standards of a crime, she said.
Mechanisms would be put in place to encourage reconciliation by allowing perpetrators to tell the truth in exchange for leniency or immunity, Chen said.
Although many perpetrators would by now be deceased, the responsibility to bring the past into light still exists, she added.
The commission’s acting minister, Yeh Hung-ling (葉虹靈), said the commission’s research is focused on the military tribunal system and the political framework of the party-state system.
The single-party state system enabled the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) to politicize the bureaucratic system, Yeh said.
The KMT controlled the administration of the country from the national government down to villages, the judicial branch, the education system and the foreign affairs establishment; the latter gave it the ability to affect people living outside the country’s borders, she said.
However, the commission does not have a clear idea of the operational system of domestic surveillance under the authoritarian regime, she said.
National security agencies remain reluctant to disclose the identities of their informants, and the commission is continuing to negotiate with them, she added.
The amendments being drafted would define the perimeters of responsibility for perpetrators, select and empower the agencies in charge of investigations, and establish systems of remedy and other technical guidelines, Yeh said.
The commission has granted 100 of 163 applicants access to the White Terror-era national security archives, it said, adding that requests are granted in all cases in which relevant files can be located.
Legislative Speaker You Si-kun (游錫堃) and Deng Chu-mei (鄭竹梅) — the daughter of Deng Nan-jung (鄭南榕), who self-immolated in 1989 in defense of “100 percent freedom of expression” — were among those who filed for archival access.
The commission released the information in the wake of a media report last week that Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Huang Kuo-shu (黃國書) was an informant for the KMT in his student days.
Huang confirmed the report and said he would leave the party and not seek re-election.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift