A noted figure in Taiwan’s democracy movement was yesterday implicated as an informant of the then-Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) regime during the White Terror era.
Lee Chiu-yuan (李秋遠) — a founding member of the China Democratic Party — informed the government of a plan by democracy advocate Su Tung-chi (蘇東啟), leading to his arrest, Academia Historica said at the book launch of The Su Tung-chi Case: A Collection of Historical Documents (蘇東啟案史料彙編) in Taipei.
Lee served in the National Security Council in 2000, under then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁). He died in 2005.
The Su case is representative of the fate of Taiwanese independence advocates, Academia Historica president Chen Yi-shen (陳儀深) told the event.
The book, comprising four volumes of primary sources, details how Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) rule relied on secret police informants, he said.
Taiwanese who opposed the regime were targeted, as the government feared that they might take up arms against it, he added.
Tsai Kuan-yu (蔡寬裕), a survivor of political persecution, told the event that he was “surprised” when he learned about Lee’s complicity.
In 1961, Su planned to recruit ethnic Taiwanese members of the Marine Corps for an armed uprising against the government. He was motivated by the purge of the editor of and contributors to the Free China Journal, thinking that the incident showed that peaceful reform was not possible, the book shows.
Su told Lee about the plan, and the latter informed the National Security Bureau, which then arrested Su and about 50 other dissidents, citing information from a “highly placed informant,” the book shows.
Previously, Lee informed the bureau of four attempts to organize political parties in opposition to the KMT, with his spy activities including wearing a wire on one occasion, it shows.
Su was in 1962 sentenced to death by a military tribunal, but the sentence was later commuted to life in prison amid pressure on Chiang’s regime. Su remained in prison until a general pardon in 1975 after Chiang’s death. Su died in 1992.
His daughter, Su Chih-fen (蘇治芬), is a legislator representing a constituency in Yunlin County.
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