Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) yesterday said he cares about the 228 Incident and the city government would not avoid the issue of transitional justice, after the Taiwan National Alliance refused to cohost this year’s 228 Incident memorial event with the city government.
The Taipei City Government’s annual 228 Incident memorial event has for several years been co-organized with the Taipei 228 Incident Association and the Taiwan National Alliance.
However, as Chiang Wan-an is a great-grandson of former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), the Taiwan National Alliance said that it would not cohost the event this year, as many family members of victims would not accept the mayor at the event.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
The alliance said it would hold its own memorial event at Liberty Square (自由廣場) on Feb. 28.
Chiang Wan-an said he has always cared about the 228 Incident, and that he would face the issue calmly and listen to people’s concerns.
“As for the role of the Taipei City Government, we will do our best to listen to different opinions, and will not avoid the issue,” he said, adding that the Department of Cultural Affairs had arranged for him to meet with a few family members of victims last week to listen to their thoughts and wishes.
Chiang Wan-an said that when he was a legislator, he met with many people to discuss issues of transitional justice, and some family members of victims had said it was important to redress judicial wrongdoings and revoke wrongful convictions.
He said he would continue to listen to people’s wishes so that the historical truth and social harmony can be restored.
The 228 Incident refers to protesters being shot by security personnel at the Governor General’s Office in Taipei following an incident in the city on Feb. 27, 1947.
About 18,000 to 28,000 people, many of them members of the intellectual elite, were killed during the subsequent crackdown launched by the then-Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) regime, which lasted into early May 1947.
The event also marked the beginning of the White Terror era that saw thousands of people arrested, imprisoned or executed.
In 2006, then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) established a truth commission to investigate the 228 Incident, and wrote an investigative report that pointed to Chiang Kai-shek as the main culprit behind the massacre.
A year-long renovation of Taipei’s Bangka Park (艋舺公園) began yesterday, as city workers fenced off the site and cleared out belongings left by homeless residents who had been living there. Despite protests from displaced residents, a city official defended the government’s relocation efforts, saying transitional housing has been offered. The renovation of the park in Taipei’s Wanhua District (萬華), near Longshan Temple (龍山寺), began at 9am yesterday, as about 20 homeless people packed their belongings and left after being asked to move by city personnel. Among them was a 90-year-old woman surnamed Wang (王), who last week said that she had no plans
TO BE APPEALED: The environment ministry said coal reduction goals had to be reached within two months, which was against the principle of legitimate expectation The Taipei High Administrative Court on Thursday ruled in favor of the Taichung Environmental Protection Bureau in its administrative litigation against the Ministry of Environment for the rescission of a NT$18 million fine (US$609,570) imposed by the bureau on the Taichung Power Plant in 2019 for alleged excess coal power generation. The bureau in November 2019 revised what it said was a “slip of the pen” in the text of the operating permit granted to the plant — which is run by Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) — in October 2017. The permit originally read: “reduce coal use by 40 percent from Jan.
China might accelerate its strategic actions toward Taiwan, the South China Sea and across the first island chain, after the US officially entered a military conflict with Iran, as Beijing would perceive Washington as incapable of fighting a two-front war, a military expert said yesterday. The US’ ongoing conflict with Iran is not merely an act of retaliation or a “delaying tactic,” but a strategic military campaign aimed at dismantling Tehran’s nuclear capabilities and reshaping the regional order in the Middle East, said National Defense University distinguished adjunct lecturer Holmes Liao (廖宏祥), former McDonnell Douglas Aerospace representative in Taiwan. If
‘SPEY’ REACTION: Beijing said its Eastern Theater Command ‘organized troops to monitor and guard the entire process’ of a Taiwan Strait transit China sent 74 warplanes toward Taiwan between late Thursday and early yesterday, 61 of which crossed the median line in the Taiwan Strait. It was not clear why so many planes were scrambled, said the Ministry of National Defense, which tabulated the flights. The aircraft were sent in two separate tranches, the ministry said. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday “confirmed and welcomed” a transit by the British Royal Navy’s HMS Spey, a River-class offshore patrol vessel, through the Taiwan Strait a day earlier. The ship’s transit “once again [reaffirmed the Strait’s] status as international waters,” the foreign ministry said. “Such transits by
RSS