Control Yuan member Kao Yung-cheng (高涌誠) yesterday unveiled a report on the military’s killing of 20 Chinese-Vietnamese refugees in Kinmen County (金門) in 1987 amid a standoff between Taiwan and China.
The refugees had departed from Hong Kong and stopped at a Chinese port before going ashore in Kinmen, where the shooting happened.
Kao presented his findings to the Control Yuan, after interviewing the military personnel involved in the incident. He also visited the site of the incident, and examined archives and documents kept by the military.
The report’s summary said that 20 Vietnamese nationals, who were of ethnic Chinese descent, came ashore on the islet of Lieyu (烈嶼) on a motorboat on March 7, 1987.
They were killed by soldiers stationed on islet upon orders from the army’s Kinmen Defense Command, the report said.
The shooting took place on Donggang (東岡) shore, and came to be known as the Donggang Incident, or the Lieyu massacre. The islet is off Kinmen Island, about 6km from Xiamen in China’s Fujian Province.
Accounts of the shooting soon leaked, as conscripts returned home after their mandatory service ended, Kao said, leading to newspapers reporting on the incident a few months later.
It also prompted Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers to demand an investigation by the Ministry of National Defense.
Initially, ministry officials did not talk to anyone outside the military establishment about the killing, and a gag order was issued by officers of the army’s 158th Division, which was responsible for the defense of Kinmen, Lieyu, and nearby islets against China.
“Files and records about the incident do exist in the archives kept by the army, but these were not open to the public,” Kao said.
The command interviewed and questioned soldiers who were involved to compile a preliminary report, he said.
Meanwhile, under pressure from lawmakers, a military court conducted an investigation, which concluded in September 1987, he said.
The military court recommended charges against several unit commanders for the killing of unarmed civilians.
A division leader, a brigade commander and two company officers were handed prison terms of less than two years, but the sentences were suspended, with the court saying “there are mitigating circumstances, as they [the defendants] took action out of duty and responsibility.”
Kao said he reopened the case last year, because many reports had been written over the decades by people involved, followed by second-hand accounts.
Some people retold the original accounts with exaggeration and wildly different information regarding the number of deaths and the circumstances which led to the killings, he said.
“With the pervasive use of social media in recent years, people have been retelling the 1987 incident, creating new reports, which are replete with errors. So I felt the responsibility to investigate and straighten the facts,” Kao said.
“I also did it to avoid an international misunderstanding, as there was confusion on the original departure points of the Vietnamese nationals,” Kao said.
Kao pointed to the Cold War and the tense military standoff between Taiwan and China at the time, with frequent enemy intrusions and shooting between the two sides on frontline islands.
“Up to early 1980s, Taiwan had an open policy to accept Vietnamese refugees fleeing from conflict and postwar turbulence, most of them fleeing by boat to Hong Kong, China or Taiwan,” the report said.
They were of Chinese descent, although they were Vietnamese citizens, the report said.
SPACE VETERAN: Kjell N. Lindgren, who helps lead NASA’s human spaceflight missions, has been on two expeditions on the ISS and has spent 311 days in space Taiwan-born US astronaut Kjell N. Lindgren is to visit Taiwan to promote technological partnerships through one of the programs organized by the US for its 250th national anniversary. Lindgren would be in Taiwan from Tuesday to Saturday next week as part of the US Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs’ US Speaker Program, organized to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) said in a statement yesterday. Lindgren plans to engage with key leaders across the nation “to advance cutting-edge technological partnerships and inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers,”
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus yesterday said it opposes the introduction of migrant workers from India until a mechanism is in place to prevent workers from absconding. Minister of Labor Hung Sun-han (洪申翰) on Thursday told the Legislative Yuan that the first group of migrant workers from India could be introduced as early as this year, as part of a government program. The caucus’ opposition to the policy is based on the assessment that “the risk is too high,” KMT caucus secretary-general Lin Pei-hsiang (林沛祥) said. Taiwan has a serious and long-standing problem of migrant workers absconding from their contracts, indicating that
UNREASONABLE SURVEILLANCE: A camera targeted on an road by a neighbor captured a man’s habitual unsignaled turn into home, netting him dozens of tickets The Taichung High Administrative Court has canceled all 45 tickets given to a man for failing to use a turn signal while driving, as it considered long-term surveillance of his privacy more problematic than the traffic violations. The man, surnamed Tseng (曾), lives in Changhua County and was reported 45 times within a month for failing to signal while driving when he turned into the alley where his residence is. The reports were filed by his neighbor, who set up security cameras that constantly monitored not only the alley but also the door and yard of Tseng’s house. The surveillance occurred from July
TRADE-OFF: Beijing seeks to trade a bowl of tempura for a Chinese delicacy, an official said, while another said its promises were attempts to interfere in the polls The government must carefully consider the national security implications of building a bridge connecting Kinmen County and Xiamen, China, the Public Construction Commission (PCC) said yesterday. PCC Commissioner Derek Chen (陳金德), who is also a minister without portfolio, made the remarks in a meeting of the legislature’s Transportation Committee, after Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Hsu Fu-kuei (徐富癸) asked about China’s proposal of new infrastructure projects to further connect Kinmen and Lienchiang (Matsu) counties with Xiamen. China unveiled the bridge plan, along with nine other policies for Taiwan, on Sunday, the last day of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun’s (鄭麗文) visit
RSS