Transitional Justice in Taiwan: Transforming Historical Sites of Injustice
by Chris Lynd
ABSTRACT
This study presents the idea of transforming the historical sites of injustice in Taiwan — public and private locales where an authoritarian regime committed serious human rights violations — through preservation, restoration, and repurposing as practical methods to enforce transitional justice. The transformation of these sites serves four main functions. First, preserving the sites is to preserve history through showcasing the sites as the products from interactions between people and the land. Second, revealing the truth behind these sites and repurposing them realise the core value of transitional justice. Many of these sites were military bases or police stations that continue to serve the same purposes to the present day. If not repurposed, they will aggravate the trauma of the victims and their families by being the constant reminders of grief and symbols of settler colonial incorporation’s violence. Third, if applicable to repurposing, potential of utilisation could be endless. Fourth, many of these spaces were government buildings from the Japanese era, beautifully designed with meticulous attention to detail, yet were sadly festooned by the settler colonial incorporation with paint, tiles, unbalanced rooftop additions etc after the Second World War. Restoring them to their original condition with some traces of later alterations preserved for educational purposes would help improve the visual impression of cities and reinstate the benchmark of aesthetics in architecture and street design from the Japanese era, which could hopefully endow Taiwan’s current public spaces with more culture and decency. For the authority of the Republic of China’s current regulations on transitional justice ends in preserving the historical sites of injustice, which is an incomplete and futile effort in transitional justice, to conduct such idea, I argue that laws concerned must be amended or legislated.
Suddenly, the Kuomintang soldiers atop the coach gateway of the Taiwan Provincial Executive Administration Office Building started shooting at the protestors and nearby civilians with machine-guns, and the crowd dispersed. Many were killed on the spot and so many others heavily injured. (Chang 21)
I was first tortured by the police at the Detention Centre of the Criminal Investigation Corps. During the first interrogation, I denied their accusation, and they slapped me in the face and knocked off one of my teeth. When I denied again, two police officers pressed against my cheek bones from both sides to open my mouth, and another had water gushing down my throat until I lost control of my bladder and fainted. A week later, during the third interrogation, they bashed me up right after I entered the interrogation room, and I still denied what they said. They hang me on the ceiling with a string tying my thumbs for over an hour. I couldn’t control my bladder and bowels; the filth was everywhere. And I passed out. (Historical Sites of Injustice, “Criminal Investigation Corps”)
The execution ground was located by the riverside right across the embankment, less than one kilometre from where we were standing. I saw military police push them off the truck, and shot them the instant they touched the ground. Everything happened so fast; just a few minutes later, I arrived only to find that they were all gone. (Lan 240)
The passages above are the actual accounts from the victims and their families of some of the countless human rights violations in Taiwan committed by the authoritarian settler-state of the Republic of China. They are the voices of the oppressed, and the testimonial evidence against atrocity. The historical sites of injustice refer to the public and private locales where massive and human rights violations like these were committed by an authoritarian regime in Taiwan between 15 August 1945 and 6 November 1992 (Section 2. Article 5. Act on Promoting Transitional Justice). By 26 May 2022, the Transitional Justice Commission has registered 42 sites as the historical sites of injustice based on investigations and evidence (Transitional Justice Commission 3: 227–32), with 106 more to be registered and several hundreds more to be investigated (Transitional Justice Commission II: 29–32).
For the purpose of this study, the term ‘Taiwan’ is defined as a collective noun representing a group of 79 islands located in the West Pacific including Taiwan Island, the Penghu Islands (Pescadores), Green Island and others (Su 1). Based on archaeological findings, the very first records of human habitation on Taiwan Island can be traced back to 50,000 BC (Chou, Taiwan lishi 12); the collective noun ‘Taiwanese’ or ‘Taiwanese people’ refers to the people, regardless of ethnicity, who were born, lived or had lived in Taiwan by 15 August 1945, and the people who were born in Taiwan from 15 August 1945 onwards. Until the day present, parts or the entirety of Taiwan have been colonised, occupied, ceded, annexed and traded by various foreign powers with force, but this study will focus on three eras: the ‘Japanese era’, the ‘Kuomintang era’ and the ‘post-authoritarian era’, respectively representing the time periods when Taiwan was a part of the Japanese Empire, under the settler-state Republic of China’s authoritarian rule, and the settler-state Republic of China’s relatively democratic rule.
The Japanese era refers to the time period between 17 June 1895 and 25 October 1945. After the Great Qing lost the First Sino-Japanese War to the Japanese Empire, the Treaty of Shimonoseki, signed by both on 17 April 1895, stated that the Great Qing would permanently cede Taiwan Island and the Penghu Islands to the Japanese Empire. On 17 June 1895, the ceremony celebrating the commencement of Japan’s colonial rule in Taiwan was held by the first Japanese governor-general of Taiwan Kabayama Sukenori at Siânn-lāi (later as a part of Taihoku, or Taipei) (Chou, Taiwan lishi 121). On 15 August 1945, the Japanese Empire surrendered to the Allies unconditionally, marking the end of both the Second World War and the Japanese era of Taiwan. Based on the Kuomintang’s strong ideology of Chinese nationalism and cultural superiority as a part of the fascist Republic of China’s brainwashing policy following settler colonialism, most officially approved private publications and all government announcements, documents, newspapers, textbooks and monuments etc from the late 1940s to mid 1990s referred this time period as 日據時期 (the short time period when Japan occupied Taiwan), which was one of the Kuomintang’s many efforts in erasing the fact that the Japanese Empire had governed Taiwan with legitimacy for over half a century (Wu 54). From the mid 1990s forward, a more neutral term, 日治時期 (the short time period when Japan ruled Taiwan), has gradually replaced the previous discriminative term adapted by society in written form (Wu 63). The choice for this study is 日本時代, which literally means ‘the era of Japan’ in the Taiwanese language. 日本時代 is the most common word that the Taiwanese people use to address this time period in the Taiwanese language, usually by the Taiwanese-speaking Taiwanese who lived through this era themselves and their descendants for whom the Taiwanese language is their mother tongue (Wu 54). The ‘Kuomintang era’ marks the time period between 15 August 1945 and 6 November 1992, based on the official definition of ‘period of authoritarian rule’ by the Republic of China’s Act on Promoting Transitional Justice (Section 1. Article 3. Act on Promoting Transitional Justice). ‘Kuomintang era’ is the direct translation from the Taiwanese word 國民黨時代, literally meaning ‘the era of the Kuomintang’. ‘Post-authoritarian era’ refers to the time period from 7 November 1992 onwards.
The purpose of this study is to demonstrate the necessity of preserving, restoring and repurposing the historical sites of injustice so as to thoroughly realise transitional justice in Taiwan, and address the current predicament of the authorities concerned in realising such transformations with practical solutions.
After the Japanese Empire’s unconditional surrender to the Allies in 1945, the Republic of China established its illegitimate rule in Taiwan, which has continued to the day present (Chen, Chong gou 76). Since the takeover, the authoritarian regime of the Republic of China, formed and led by the settler colonial incorporation Chinese Nationalist Party, or the Kuomintang, had systematically plundered and tortured Taiwanese society with both ideological and repressive state apparatus for some 50 years. After 1945, the corrupted Kuomintang government started to exploit Taiwan by confiscating and Taiwanese resources and sending them back to China in the name of supporting the ongoing Chinese Civil War (Chou, Taiwan lishi 253). In less than a year, the Taiwanese economy collapsed, and people suffered; collisions between the Chinese and the Taiwanese constantly occurred (Chen, Chong gou 204), and stories of Chinese soldiers raping Taiwanese women were often reported (Chen, Bainian 235). Taiwanese society could not take it any longer.
On 27 February 1947, during an event of private tobacco confiscation in Tuā-tiū-tiânn, the Chinese Monopoly Bureau officers wounded a private tobacco vendor and took away all her earnings and tobacco. Enraged by the Chinese officer’s action, a crowd of Taiwanese gathered and surrounded the officers. One of the them was tackled by a civilian from behind, so he fired his pistol, and ran away. The shot accidentally hit a pedestrian nearby, who died the next day. The incident was reported by the newspaper, which fuelled the hatred of the Taiwanese who had been living in Taiwan in the past centuries towards the Chinese. On 28 February, the day after the shooting incident, a crowd of protesters gathered in front of the Taiwan Provincial Executive Administration Office Building, and the Kuomintang soldiers responded with massive shootings. It was the coup de grâce of Taiwanese society’s toleration for the Chinese’s immorality, and riots and protests derived from the hatred occurred (Chen, Chong gou 204–12). In the following two and a half months, the Kuomintang carried out mass slaughter all over Taiwan Island, later known as the 28 February Massacre (Chou, Taiwan lishi 262). Some 28,000 lives were lost in the massacre, with most of them being Taiwanese social and political elites, and Taiwanese society was silenced and demoralised ever after (until the end of the KMT regime) (Chou, Taiwan lishi 262–63).
Within the next two years, before the Kuomintang lost the Chinese Civil War, in the name of fighting communism, Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang designed a formidable but illegitimate legal system to solidify the Chiang family’s authoritarian power (Chou, Zhuanxing zhengyi 32) and allowed the Kuomintang to legally oppress and annihilate any considered threat to the state with will (Chou, Zhuanxing zhengyi 52). The system was pillared by four laws and regulations: 動員戡亂時期臨時條款 (effective between 10 May 1948 and 1 May 1991), 臺灣省戒嚴令 (effective between 20 May 1949 and 14 July 1987), 懲治叛亂條例 (effective between 21 June 1949 and 22 May 1991) and 戡亂時期檢肅匪諜條例 (effective between 13 June 1950 and 3 June 1991). These laws and regulations, alongside with some others, formed the legal foundation of the Republic of China’s relentless reign in Taiwan (Chou, Zhuanxing zhengyi 28). Through a complex structure of collaborations among the military, the police, and the intelligence, injustice was cast upon Taiwanese society for the next half-century, as the Kuomintang deprived the rights and freedoms of the Taiwanese, known today as the White Terror (Chou, Zhuanxing zhengyi 16).
After the Second World War, Taiwan was plundered by the Republic of China as the Kuomintang confiscated property of the Japanese colonial government, and of both Japanese and Taiwanese private corporations (Chen, Chong gou 99–100), which, in terms of real estate, included central and local government buildings, military facilities, public infrastructure, factories, banks, religious venues, offices, shops, houses etc. These are defined as the ‘ill-gotten properties by political parties and their affiliate organisations’ by the Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee (Section 4. Article 4. The Act Governing the Settlement of Ill-gotten Properties by Political Parties and Their Affiliate Organisations), many of which are also identified as the historical sites of injustice. One of the most infamous cases among all would be Higashi Hongan-ji of Taihoku, a Japanese Buddhist temple located in the heart of Se-mn̂g-ting, a vibrant neighbourhood to the west of Taihoku city centre (Chou, Zhuanxing zhengyi 68).
Built in 1936, Hongan-ji of Taihoku was a reinforced concrete structured Buddhist temple with a design fusing Indian and Japanese styling, and was considered an architectural expression of Pan-Asianism (Ling, Zhishang Mingzhi cun 2 83). After the Second World War, the temple was occupied and turned into a detention centre for the political prisoners by the Taiwan Province Security Command of the Republic of China (later as a part of the Taiwan Province Garrison Command of the Republic of China), where interrogation through different kinds of torturing and illegal trials including capital punishment were carried out every day (Chou, Zhuanxing zhengyi 68). The following passages are the accounts of former prisoners depicting their life under the prison’s diabolical environment and the outrageous human rights violations committed by the Kuomintang:
In the basement of Hongan-ji of Taihoku, there were many prisoners looking pale and wearing red short sleeve uniforms. There was no pillow or quilt. The guard only gave me a terrible, thin blanket with an awful odour. There was no towel or toothbrush. I could only make do by rubbing my fingers on my teeth with a cup of water the guard gave me once a day. (Historical Sites of Injustice, “Hongan-ji of Taihoku”)
They started to interrogate me the moment I arrived. They strapped me onto the ‘tiger stool’ (a torture mechanism that stretches the prisoners’ tendons between their calves and thighs to the verge of laceration), performed water cure to me and electrocuted me. They didn’t let me sleep, nor did they give me water. It was hell. (Historical Sites of Injustice, “Hongan-ji of Taihoku”)
In 1967, after the Taiwan Province Garrison Command of the Republic of China moved the detention centre to a new location, Hongan-ji of Taihoku and the land underneath was sold to the public by the Kuomintang. The grand Buddhist temple was demolished completely, soon replaced by three high-rise, characterless commercial buildings (Historical Sites of Injustice, “Hongan-ji of Taihoku”). By doing so, gone were the traces of the past, but the atrocities should never be forgotten. It is now the responsibility of our generation to reveal the truth behind the historical sites of injustice, and properly achieve transitional justice. However, many historical sites of injustice share the same destiny as Hongan-ji of Taihoku’s, which makes it harder for the authorities concerned to carry out the transformation regarding transitional justice. The current transitional justice regulations simply don’t have the jurisdiction over requesting such transformations from privately owned properties. The practical solution to the problem is either the amendment of the current Act on Promoting Transitional Justice, or the legislation of a new law specifically designed to address the matter, which will be elaborated later.
Transitional justice is enforced so reconciliation can be reached within society. The transformation of the historical sites of injustice is built on the notion that with the preservation and demonstration of these locales the memories of injustice would be recorded spatially. Through this, history would never be left in the past, and society could learn from the mistakes. These sites, as artefacts, are products from interactions between people and the land. Preserving the sites also preserves the area development histories, further attaining academic value. In practice, the preservation of sites currently owned by the government of the Republic of China should proceed immediately after investigations; as some of the historical sites of injustice were sold as real estate to private corporations or individuals by the Kuomintang, the preservation of such sites should follow the negotiations between the authorities concerned and the owner. It is society’s duty to cultivate the perception of preserving these sites in the sense of preserving cultural heritage, but it’s also the government’s responsibility to educate and inspire, all for the enforcement of transitional justice.
During the Japanese era and the Kuomintang era, the symbols of authority were planted at the focal points in populated areas. In cities, symbols like these could be found anywhere, from government facilities like office buildings, military bases, police stations, post offices, to public spaces and venues such as railway stations, city roundabouts, parks, or even cinemas and school classrooms. These symbols include statues, busts, and portraits of authoritarian leaders, insignias of authoritarian parties or regimes, monuments, propaganda materials etc, which are designed to represent the power of the authority and inflict fear upon Taiwanese society. In addition to physical objects, symbols of authority also exist in the form of naming. Nearly thirty years after the end of the Kuomintang era, there are still 386 of streets, districts, government organisations and facilities in Taiwan named after the authoritarian leaders Chiang Kai-shek and his son Chiang Ching-kuo (Transitional Justice Commission II: 18–21). Currently, in the efforts of transforming the historical sites of injustice, the removal of the symbols of authority is listed as one of the primary tasks for transitional justice (Section 1. Article 5. Act on Promoting Transitional Justice). However, transitional justice could not be realised only through removing the physical symbols. Whilst many historical sites of injustice were in fact demolished and replaced by other public or private facilities, such as Hongan-ji of Taihoku, many still exist in their original forms and continue to serve the same purposes to the day present — the functions of the sites are the symbols of authority themselves, such as police stations, military bases and other government facilities regarding national security. The main reason that these sites still serve the same purpose today as they did in the Kuomintang era or even the Japanese era was often based on the connection between location and function. However, if not repurposed, they will aggravate the trauma of the victims and their families by being the constant reminders of grief and symbols of settler colonial incorporation’s violence.
The repurposing should be planned and designed to the sites’ specific conditions and qualities, and the cultural texture of the neighbouring areas. One outstanding example would be the restoration and repurposing of the Taihoku North Police Agency Building in Tuā-tiū-tiânn. The Taihoku North Police Department Building was originally built in 1933 by the Japanese colonial government to monitor Tuā-tiū-tiânn in the west of Taihoku, a wealthy and populated area where many Taiwanese activist resided. The Taihoku North Police Agency Building, with its constabulary nature and history of being the epicentre of oppression over Taiwanese social movements, was already considered a symbol of authority in the Japanese era (Bureau of Cultural Heritage). The building was an L-shaped, two-storey, reinforced concrete structure decorated with the beautiful ‘scratch tiles’ of five colours and two sizes made by kilns in Pak-tâu (Bureau of Cultural Heritage).
In 1945, the Taihoku North Police Agency Building was occupied by the Taiwan Provincial Executive Administration Office of the Republic of China, and was converted into the Detention Centre of Criminal Investigation Corps in 1949 (Historical Sites of Injustice, “Criminal Investigation Corps”). During the White Terror, the functions of the Detention Centre of Criminal Investigation Corps were similar to that of the Detention Centre of Security Office (Higashi Hongan-ji of Taihoku), which were detention and interrogation. However, whilst the inhuman interrogations at the Detention Centre of Security Office were conducted by the intelligence service, they were carried out by the police officers at the Detention Centre of Criminal Investigation Corps, who by law simply did not have such power, which further proves the illegitimacy in the settler-state’s rule, in addition to all human rights violations committed.
Between 1945 and 2012, the Taihoku North Police Agency Building was used by different units of the police as a detention centre and office, and it was registered as a monument of the special municipality, one of the categories of cultural heritage according to the Cultural Heritage Preservation Act in 1998 (Bureau of Cultural Heritage).
The transformation of the Taihoku North Police Agency Building started in 2013, and was reborn in 2018 with a new identity — the Taiwan New Cultural Movement Memorial Museum.
The Taiwan New Cultural Movement Memorial Museum celebrates the Taiwanese thinkers and political elites’ efforts in pursuing autonomy and the enlightenment of Taiwanese society through spreading Western and modern values in science, politics, philosophy etc. The transformation tore down the symbol of authority and establish a starting point where Taiwanese cultural identity could rise from the oppression, furthering generating the sense of togetherness.
Another important procedure of transformation is the restoration of the historical sites of injustice, often the ones considered tangible cultural heritage of high artistic and cultural values (Article 3. Cultural Heritage Preservation Act). Among the historical sites of injustice, most sites applicable for restoration are existing buildings originally the government or private facilities built in the Japanese era, like the Taihoku North Police Agency Building. The design of Japanese colonial government buildings and facilities shows us that the utilisation of focal points as a tool to create authority was adapted in the planning of cities. Studies of the early Taihoku city plans suggest that the Japanese colonial government managed to create the modern approach of ruling through the visualisation of space. By tearing down the city walls from the Qing dynasty and laying out vast and beautiful boulevards, the Japanese redefined the public spaces in Taiwan and make the ruled be seen by the authority (Su 141). Focal points could easily be found when a four to five-storey government building with meticulous decorations, arches, columns and Mansard roofs was placed at the centre of an area full of three-storey street houses. The policy of modernising Taiwan with Western approaches, including using Western architectural elements as the dominant design language of government buildings, was the product of Japan’s modernisation in the second half of the nineteenth century (Ling, Zhishang Mingzhi cun 22–23). The construction of elaborate and magnificent public architectures creates symbols of authority, as through the display of power, aesthetics and wealth, the colonised would develop a sense of awe and admiration (Ling, Zhishang Mingzhi cun 2 31).
In the Japanese era, apart from the government facilities, most buildings were designed to have three stories at most by law to protect the cities’ visual impression of unified street designs (Ling, Zhishang Mingzhi cun 95). After the Second World War, alongside with everything else in Taiwan, architecture of all kind fell into the hands of the Kuomintang. Most of the colonial government buildings were used to house the administration units similar to what they were designed for back in the Japanese era, yet due to the lack of culture, knowledge in preservation, sense of aesthetics and greed, many of them were sadly festooned with alterations made in the name of practicality. In Taiwan, the most common elements of such sacrilege to architecture design were paint, tiles, and additions of extra stories over the top of the buildings. Nowadays, people often joke that these elements form the design language of the Republic of China (中華民國美學). When asked about the reason behind the lack of aesthetics in architectural design for streets and public facilities, people from the last generation often respond with excuses such as the shortage of resources and bad economy
However, I propose that these alterations are not merely the unfortunate byproducts of human activities after the Second World War, but the absolute symbols of authority under cultural colonialism of the settler colonial incorporation (Sugimoto 284). The original Building Act of the Republic of China was promulgated on 26 December 1938, which regulated the design and construction of buildings to ensure the welfare of society, especially safety and the function of the buildings. It was promulgated before the Second World War. However, by 1945, according to the amendment of the Building Act from 1944, the law clearly stated that construction and alteration of buildings of public or private ownership could only start after being verified and receiving a permit from the authority concerned (Section 1. Article 5. Building Act). Furthermore, the regulation and instructions regarding building alterations without official permits was promulgated in 1957 (Section 1. Article 5. Building Act). It’s reasonable to question if postwar Taiwanese society was under the unlawful rule of the Kuomintang government even aside from the already established field of human rights violations, and the indulgence of such cultural, moral and aesthetic deterioration was in fact a part of the Kuomintang’s scheme to replace our own cultural identity with the Confucian values of practicality, frugality, prudence and even chastity. In contrast to the unified and harmonious visual design in the Japanese era, Taiwanese streets now are covered with hideousness and absurdity stemmed from cultural colonialism, an issue that should be dealt with like any other under the framework of transitional justice.
During the Kuomintang era, the central government ordered that all police units should unify the visual identification of their buildings (Lu), which required the buildings to be presented in a glaring red-and-white colour scheme. As many historical sites of injustice are previous or even current police stations, precincts and other constabulary facilities, the red-and-white colour scheme has become not only the visual identification of law and order, but a symbol of authority and the White Terror. The removal of such visual symbol is crucial to transitional justice. The appearance of the Taihoku North Police Agency Building under the use of the Taipei City Police Department Datong Precinct offers us an example of what a police station from the Japanese era would look like after being violently altered by the Kuomintang.
The two-storey building was added with a third storey and the extension to the south wing (Bureau of Cultural Heritage). The façade’s original dark tan scratch tiles were replaced with smooth tiles in red and white, and the cracks between the tiles as well as the decorated columns were painted white. Thankfully, nearly all later alterations, apart from the extension to the south wing, were removed during the restoration process.
Another example as a possible candidate for future restoration is the former Taiheichō Police Station Building, the building of a small police station built in 1931. Similar to the Taihoku North Police Agency Building, the Taiheichō Police Precinct Building was altered with extensions to its structure, application of red tiles and white paint, and losing nearly all original decorative details.
Restoring these sites to their original condition would help remove their visible identity as the symbols of authority, but the authorities concerned must also respect the delicate historical values of these sites upon the restoration. Before the restoration process, what’s to be preserved is as equally important as what’s to be removed. It’s crucial that standard procedures for the restorations of historical sites of injustice are to be enacted through legislature of the regulations concerned. With some traces of later alterations preserved for educational purpose, the transformation of historical sites of injustice built from the Japanese era could also preserve Taiwanese history, and encourage society to reinstate the benchmark of aesthetics from the Japanese era.
For historical sites of injustice privately owned with original buildings of cultural and artistic values, the authorities concerned cannot request such transformations from their owners by the current transitional justice regulations. To solve this problem, a system for conducting transforming operations should be established by the authorities concerned by law, and a dedicated committee should be assigned for each case to ensure mutual understanding and the foundation of possible collaboration. Due to the fragile nature of some of the historical sites of injustice, protection procedures of the sites must be established before the actual transformation process. To encourage the owners to collaborate in the transformations, the government should fund the transformation by at least half of the cost.
For historical sites of injustice privately owned with the original buildings demolished, like Higashi Hongan-ji of Taihoku, transformations are even more challenging, as there’s nothing left to transform. My suggestion for such sites also starts with the understanding and negotiation between the government and the owners. For these sites, one monument for each alongside one or more signs with detailed information of the historical site of injustice should be erected outside or placed upon the public area-facing wall(s) of the new buildings that replaced the original structure. If for reasons there are no such public spaces for the monuments and signs to be erected, the authorities concerned should step in and provide the assistance needed to address the problems.
For the design and presentation of the monuments and signs of description, one could take inspirations from London’s blue plaques scheme. Founded in 1866, the blue plaques scheme celebrates the connections among history of well-known individuals and London’s geography (English Heritage). In general, a plaque is a round metal plate inscribed with a famous figure’s name and title, years of birth and death, occupation or notable contribution, and the fact that he or she lived, stayed or worked at that location before. The blue plaques are generally placed on the exterior of a building, at the ground level or one level higher, so they could be seen by the pedestrians.
With a large amount of the historical sites of injustice now being owned privately, the jurisdiction of the Republic of China’s current transitional justice regulations ends in preserving such historical sites of injustice, which is an incomplete and futile effort in transitional justice compared to what could and should be done, as seen in the Article 5 of the Act on Promoting Transitional Justice:
‘In order to establish a liberal democratic constitutional order, deny the legitimacy of authoritarian rule, and learn the historical lessons of human rights abuses, symbols appearing in public buildings or places that commemorate or express nostalgia for authoritarian rulers shall be removed, renamed, or dealt with in some other way.’ (5–1)
‘Places where the rulers engaged in large-scale human rights abuses during the period of authoritarian rule shall be preserved or rebuilt, and plans shall be made for their designation as historic sites.’ (5–2)
It is clear that these regulations offer strong guidelines regarding the removal of the symbols of authority and the transformations of the sites. However, in practice, meaningful and concrete transformations for the historical sites of injustice would never be conducted under the current regulations. Only With either the amendment of the current Act on Promoting Transitional Justice, or the legislation of a new law specifically dedicated to the transformation of the historical sites of injustice, could transitional justice be enforced properly.
Transitional justice could never be done in a day; in fact, it’s been less than five years since the Act on Promoting Transitional Justice was promulgated. The transformation is hard, but we’ve made progress even within such a short period of time. Some say that democracy is defined by its characteristics of taking things slowly; but with the time-sensitive nature of protecting the historical sites of injustice, we should perhaps come up with more powerful and efficient ways to do the right thing. Fortunately, the progress of transitional justice in Taiwan is visible, and more and more people across generations have risen to this cultural awakening. Even for the absolute symbol of authority in the Taipei City centre, Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, despite the objection of the Kuomintang, consensus on the necessity of its transformation is gradually forming within Taiwanese society.
Hopefully, by transforming the historical sites of injustice, peace and calm could be brought to the victims. Whilst it’s believed that many more sites are still yet to be discovered, the inception and continuation of the transformation plans could help us get through the unknown. Transitional justice is something that our society needs to do on its own, and it’s not an option, but our only way to have a normal and functioning political system in Taiwan — to create a peaceful and understanding community of ours.
In the past 50,000 years, people on this island, aborigines and immigrants alike, have identified themselves as ‘Taiwanese’, but even to the day present, in order to stay and live here, are still asked to bear the identification of the Republic of China citizenship. It is clear to me that the last puzzle of our transitional justice is to establish a nation-state of our own, but to do that, we need a unified community. Our identity as the Taiwanese isn’t defined by blood, but what we’ve been through. The past will never be left in the past, and injustice cannot be undone. Perhaps one day we could finally create our own nation-ness, legitimate and beyond contestation, but what we need right now is to face the truth of our past and let it guide us to reconciliation.
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