By Jenny W. hsu
STAFF REPORTER
Sunday, Jul 26, 2009, Page 3
A necessary step toward achieving full transitional justice
in Taiwan is to properly assign blame for its bloody past on
the individuals who were responsible for the repression,
academics said at a forum in Taipei yesterday contrasting
Europe’s de-Nazification efforts with the restoration of
dictator Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石)
name at one of Taipei’s main landmarks.
Work to replace the name plaque at National Taiwan Democracy
Memorial Hall with its original name — Chiang Kai-shek
Memorial Hall — began without prior notification close to
midnight on Monday.
The move drew criticism from the Democratic Progressive
Party (DPP), which said that a murderous dictator like
Chiang should never be commemorated in public spaces.
FINE-TUNING
While all academics attending the forum hosted by the DPP
criticized the government’s decision to rename the hall,
some said it was perhaps necessary to find ways to condemn
Chiang without smearing the entire Mainlander population in
Taiwan.
NAZI PRECEDENT
Wang Szu-wei (王思為),
an assistant professor at Nanhua University’s department of
nonprofit organization management, said that in Europe, it
would be unfathomable for any government to erect a public
monument to honor Adolf Hitler.
Moreover, to show the government’s determination to never
repeat Hitler’s behavior and its contrition for the millions
of victims of the infamous leader, Berlin has contributed
money and effort to compensate the victims as well as
educate the public on the truth about Hitler’s regime, he
said.
“What Chiang did to Taiwanese was enough to be described as
a crime against humanity. It is only because Taiwan is not a
signatory to the International Criminal Court that the case
has not been brought before The Hague,” he said.
He also condemned the use of taxpayers’ money to commemorate
the dictator.
Tamkang University public administration professor Shih
Cheng-feng (施正峰)
said that while condemning Chiang was essential, it was
crucial that this be done in a way that does not target all
the Mainlanders in Taiwan.
“We often talk about collective memory, but the problem is,
whose memory should we go by? We need to uncover the truth
of what Chiang did — both the good and the bad,” he said.
WEDGE
National Chengchi University history professor Hsueh
Hua-yuen (薛化元)
told the forum that what continues to serve as a wedge
between Taiwan’s ethnic groups was the lack of blame
assigned to the individuals who were responsible for the
crimes committed under the Chiang regime.
A good number of Mainlanders” were also victimized during
the White Terror era and it would be beneficial to ethnic
harmony if the public — both ethnic Taiwanese and
Mainlanders — could focus on their collective memory of that
period, he said.
This story has been viewed 290 times.
E-mail: