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2 Taiwan: The struggle to spin
history By Jonathan Adams
blue" mainlander base. "For many
Taiwanese, [2/28] is a deep wound, not just a
political issue," said Steve Chen, director of the
Conflict Study and Research Center at Chang Jung
Christian University in Tainan. "But Ma is trying
to twist it around to protect the old-time 'deep
blue' [pro-KMT] population."
This year,
even Beijing got into the 2/28 game, backing a
book in which Hsieh Hsueh-hung, a prominent
Taiwanese communist and
anti-KMT activist during the
2/28 Incident, is described as a Chinese
nationalist who would have never brooked Taiwanese
independence. And on Wednesday, an official in
China's Taiwan Affairs Office blasted "splittists"
in Taiwan for using the 2/28 anniversary to
further an independence agenda. The official said
2/28 was part of the "Chinese people's liberation
drive" by "Taiwanese compatriots".
The
struggle by politicians and propagandists to spin
history in their favor obscures a substantive
debate: What is the appropriate justice for a
60-year-old massacre, and when is it time to close
a painful chapter of the past? In 1992, the KMT
government publicly released a report admitting
that KMT troops had killed up to 28,000 people in
the incident. That marked a dramatic breakthrough:
before martial law was lifted a few years earlier,
public discussion of the 2/28 Incident was
forbidden.
The government also agreed to
pay out NT$6 million (more than US$181,000) for
each 2/28 victim, and subsequent KMT leaders, as
well as Chen, have offered official apologies. For
some relatives of 2/28 victims, that's enough -
and it's time to move on.
"I don't know
what else we can get, because the killers are all
dead," said Liao Ji-bin, whose grandfather was
shot to death and dumped in the sea north of
Taipei by KMT military police. "The two parties -
both green and blue - just want to get credit from
2/28."
But others insist that justice has
not yet been served. The major complaint: to date,
the perpetrators have not been clearly identified
and held accountable - even if only posthumously.
One group representing 2/28 victims wants the
legislature to establish a special court for a
trial of Chiang Kai-shek and his accomplices.
Others cite South Africa, which set up an official
truth and reconciliation commission in the
post-apartheid era, as a model for what Taiwan
still needs to go through to complete a healing
process.
Wu Nai-teh, a research fellow at
the Academia Sinica in Taipei, said he and other
academics are organizing their own, nonpartisan
truth and reconciliation committee. A priority:
tallying and documenting the unknown number of
victims of the White Terror, the long period of
anti-communist hysteria and KMT repression -
torture, imprisonment, summary executions,
assassinations of the regime's critics - that
followed the 2/28 Incident. Other goals: returning
property seized by the government to victims'
families, and some kind of "cultural reparations",
such as setting aside one day when television and
radio stations can only broadcast in the Taiwanese
dialect (a form of Minnan, a Chinese language used
in Fujian province on the mainland; the official
language of Taiwan is Mandarin).
Politicians' manipulation of 2/28 may only
make it more difficult for Taiwan to put the
tragedy behind it.
"Many people in Taiwan
have a feeling that they are stuck in a vicious
struggle between political parties," said Wu.
"People feel politicians in Taiwan should tackle
real issues instead."
But appeals to deal
with historical justice in a non-politicized way
are probably doomed. Already, some are bickering
over numbers: independent legislator Li Ao claimed
on Tuesday that the real number killed in the 2/28
Incident was a mere 800.
Next year's
anniversary will come just before the key
presidential election, in which the KMT hopes to
take back power after eight years of the
independence-minded DPP's rule. As in most big
elections in Taiwan, identity politics are bound
to loom large: and that means the political
wrangling over 2/28 is likely to be fiercer than
ever.
Jonathan Adams is a
Taipei-based freelance writer.
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