Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) did irreparable damage to Taiwan by enacting martial law to impose autocratic rule and military control during the post-war era, as well as by leaving the UN, which severed Taiwan’s ties to the rest of the world, historians and human rights advocates said at an academic conference in Taipei yesterday.
It has been 50 years since Chiang of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) died in 1975, Koo Kwang-ming Foundation executive director Michelle Wang (王美琇) said, adding: “Now we must examine and take account of his authoritarian rule, that many democracy activists and dissidents lost their lives during Chiang’s bloody White Terror regime.”
“We did not properly deal with our history or pass down memories of the White Terror to the younger generations,” she said. “It has led to the current political turmoil in the legislature, with the KMT legislative members — the inheritors and followers of Chiang — being so brazen as to use democratic means to trample and dismantle democracy.”
Photo: Tien Yu-hua, Taipei Times
Fu Jen Catholic University law professor Lin Cheng-yu (林政佑) said that the KMT with Chiang at the helm placed the Republic of China under military control for many decades until the lifting of martial law in 1987, adding that Chiang used the military apparatus, state security forces and intelligence agencies to impose pervasive surveillance over the whole of society.
“Chiang must be held accountable for such abuses, and the people should demand justice for his flouting of the regular justice system, trying activists and dissidents in the military courts,” he said.
Other historians said that cases in the military courts usually proceeded swiftly and lacked time for thorough investigation, leading to convictions based on insufficient grounds and circumstantial evidence.
Some defendants were tortured into giving a confession, while Chiang himself interfered in the process, turning imprisonment into death sentences in many cases.
Law professor Wu Hao-jen (吳豪人) said that Chiang did huge damage by cutting Taiwan’s links to the world when he left the UN following the admission of the People’s Republic of China, as several key nations advised him to remain as a representative of Taiwan instead.
“It is only much, much later on, after Taiwan’s democratization, that we could link up again with international agreements on human rights and freedom,” Wu said.
South Korean K-pop girl group Blackpink are to make Kaohsiung the first stop on their Asia tour when they perform at Kaohsiung National Stadium on Oct. 18 and 19, the event organizer said yesterday. The upcoming performances will also make Blackpink the first girl group ever to perform twice at the stadium. It will be the group’s third visit to Taiwan to stage a concert. The last time Blackpink held a concert in the city was in March 2023. Their first concert in Taiwan was on March 3, 2019, at NTSU Arena (Linkou Arena). The group’s 2022-2023 “Born Pink” tour set a
CPBL players, cheerleaders and officials pose at a news conference in Taipei yesterday announcing the upcoming All-Star Game. This year’s CPBL All-Star Weekend is to be held at the Taipei Dome on July 19 and 20.
The Taiwan High Court yesterday upheld a lower court’s decision that ruled in favor of former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) regarding the legitimacy of her doctoral degree. The issue surrounding Tsai’s academic credentials was raised by former political talk show host Dennis Peng (彭文正) in a Facebook post in June 2019, when Tsai was seeking re-election. Peng has repeatedly accused Tsai of never completing her doctoral dissertation to get a doctoral degree in law from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in 1984. He subsequently filed a declaratory action charging that
The Hualien Branch of the High Court today sentenced the main suspect in the 2021 fatal derailment of the Taroko Express to 12 years and six months in jail in the second trial of the suspect for his role in Taiwan’s deadliest train crash. Lee Yi-hsiang (李義祥), the driver of a crane truck that fell onto the tracks and which the the Taiwan Railways Administration's (TRA) train crashed into in an accident that killed 49 people and injured 200, was sentenced to seven years and 10 months in the first trial by the Hualien District Court in 2022. Hoa Van Hao, a
RSS