Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
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Photo Credit: KMT/Facebook
THE DPP LEGISLATIVE CAUCUS has criticized the KMT for efforts to expand the scope of designated historical sites of injustice, as part of legislature that calls for the preservation of such sites for historical memory.
Namely, the DPP has called for the preservation of sites of injustice with an aim on preserving sites connected to the White Terror, which was perpetrated during the many decades of authoritarian rule by the KMT. The KMT has proposed expanding the scope of the legislation to also include the Qing dynasty and Japanese colonial rule.
Indeed, DPP legislators have sought to point out that there is still a lack of education regarding the White Terror in Taiwan. Fan Yun in particular singled out lacking awareness of the Lin family massacre, referring to the 1980 murder of the mother and two daughters of activist and later DPP chair Lin Yi-hsiung by unknown individuals.
It is generally thought that Lin’s family members were killed by state security forces, especially seeing as Lin was under 24-hour surveillance. Nevertheless, there has never been an official declassification of who was responsible for the Lin family massacre.
To this extent, DPP legislators sought to call attention to the fact that individuals of all ethnic groups were victims of the White Terror. The KMT has frequently criticized efforts to raise awareness of the White Terror by claiming that this is merely the DPP seeking to stir up inter-ethnic tensions between waishengren, referring to those descended from those that came to Taiwan with the KMT, and other benshengren, referring to those descended from prior waves of Han migration from China.
Photo credit: KMT/Facebook
Ironically, the KMT’s proposal to also include sites of injustice from the Qing dynasty and Japanese colonial rule would not actually be a bad one, if it were not aimed at avoiding accountability and downplaying the White Terror.
Certainly, the KMT would probably like to see greater emphasis on the historical crimes committed by the Japanese empire in Taiwan during the Japanese colonial period, in line with its anti-Japanese animus. Yet raising the colonial crimes of both the Japanese and Qing dynasty against Taiwanese Indigenous–the original inhabitants of Taiwan before Han settler colonialism–would probably be too much for the KMT.
The KMT would prefer to see positive views of historical links between Taiwan and China, even when this touches on uncomfortable historical truths. That there are sites of historical injustice in the Japanese colonial era, during the Qing, and also in the Ming, points to how many different waves of settler colonialism have taken place and overlap in Taiwan, affecting different ethnic groups differently. One group’s colonial victims could prove the colonizer of another group in the course of Taiwanese history.
Indeed, the DPP has criticized the KMT for simply trying to obstruct the existing bill, when it requires urgency to preserve some historical sites of injustice. This may be the KMT’s aim, in seeking to drag things on as long as possible in order to obstruct historical preservation. The DPP has criticized the KMT for not having its own version of the bill.
Indeed, the KMT would likely gut efforts to preserve the historical memory of the White Terror. In the past, when KMT administrations held power, cultural authorities tended to emphasize the historical crimes of the Japanese colonial era, or even to fund research that downplayed the impact of the White Terror, suggesting that mainlanders were the primary victims, that the White Terror was a justified response to the threat of Communism, or that it had never truly taken place at all.
The KMT has veered into outright denialism of the White Terror in past years, as observed in the KMT’s claims about the DPP engaging in a “Green Terror” that far surpasses the White Terror in size and scale in past years. If so, one wonders where the tens of thousands of dead bodies under the Lai and Tsai administrations are. But historical denial is nothing new for the KMT.