Students must be taught about the issue of Taiwan’s sovereignty, as the Treaty of San Francisco granted the nation the right to self-determination for its people, independence advocates told a news conference in Taipei yesterday, which marked 71 years since the treaty took effect.
Sovereign State for Formosa and the Pescadores Party Chairman Cheng Tzu-tsai (鄭自才) said that in the treaty Japan renounced its rights to Taiwan and Penghu, leaving the sovereignty and international status of the nation unresolved, and it did not hand them over to the Republic of China (ROC) or the People’s Republic of China.
The treaty was signed by 48 nations, excluding Taiwan and China, on Sept. 8, 1951, in San Francisco and came into force on April 28, 1952, officially ending the Allied occupation of Japan after World War II. In it, Japan renounced all rights, title and claim to Taiwan, the Pescadores (Penghu), the Spratlys (Nansha Islands, 南沙群島) and the Paracels (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島).
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
“The treaty laid out the principle of self-determination for the people of Formosa and the Pescadores, so we have the right to build our Taiwan nation,” Cheng said, calling on the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government to incorporate the correct message of the treaty into school textbooks to educate students about Taiwan’s right to sovereignty.
There should also be public programs to educate adults, he added.
The DPP should raise the issue with the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which have failed Taiwanese by continuing to use ROC textbooks that “contain errors and lies, saying that the treaty handed Taiwan’s sovereignty to the ROC” and advocated “Taiwan’s retrocession,” he said.
Taiwan Association of University Professors chairman Chen Li-fu (陳俐甫) said that “even after 71 years, people are still confused by terms such as ‘ROC Taipei,’ ‘China, Taipei’ and ‘ROC-Taiwan.’”
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) governments of the Martial Law era forbade discussion of this issue, Chen said.
“Despite Taiwan’s democratic transition, there has not been enough effort to fix these errors and educate future generations,” he said.
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