Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
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Photo Credit: Another Believer/WikiCommons/CC BY-SA 4.0
ON THE 78TH anniversary of the 228 Massacre, the struggle for historical memory still continues in Taiwan. Namely, efforts by the KMT to deny its past atrocities continue.
This can be observed in the pan-Blue camp’s efforts to cut funding to institutions that commemorate 228 and the White Terror. As part of the wide-ranging series of cuts made by the KMT to the government budget earlier this year, 90% of the funding to the Control Yuan will be cut. The National Human Rights Commission is under the Control Yuan. It can be expected that public institutions in Taiwan that commemorate the White Terror, such as former prison sites that have since been turned into museums, will be affected.
Indeed, 228 is sometimes remembered as one of the origin points in Taiwanese identity. In this respect, while more attention internationally has gone to the KMT’s cuts to defense spending, the KMT’s cuts to funding in the cultural sector are a deliberate war on historical memory and the many different iterations of Taiwanese identity.
For example, as part of the cuts, public broadcaster PTS will experience 23 million NT in cuts and 570 million NT frozen. PTS is responsible for many of the television dramas in past years that have depicted Taiwan’s history during the White Terror, such as 2024 Hotel Saltwater. Taiwanese Hokkien programming, as well as English-language programming under Taiwan Plus, will see cuts. The KMT cutting the Ministry of Culture’s funding proves a means of lashing out against what the KMT claims to be DPP control of the cultural sector.
Likewise, though it did not take place as part of the KMT’s wave of cuts, last year the KMT defunded the Council of Indigenous Peoples. The KMT’s attack on Indigenous political and cultural representation is because the KMT seeks to undermine any government institution it does not currently control.
More broadly, the KMT continues with efforts to force Chinese identity on Taiwan, even as poll after poll and survey after survey has demonstrated that Taiwanese overwhelmingly identify as Taiwanese and not Chinese. The KMT has hardly reckoned with its past history of crimes against the Taiwanese people, as observed in how it often seeks to frame the DPP as engaged in a “Green Terror” worse than the White Terror. If so, one wonders how tens of thousands of deaths occurred under the Lai and Tsai administrations without the public noticing, and where the bodies have been concealed–even as the truth about who is responsible for many of the killings during the White Terror has not been disclosed.
Civic efforts to commemorate 228 continue–as organically organized, often by young people–rather than through brainwashing of the youth by the DPP, as the KMT sometimes seems to think. This proves more important than ever at a time when those who were alive during 228 are at least 78 years old and will not be alive much longer. Soon, the 228 Massacre will pass over into historical memory, yet it continues to be the case that the KMT lashes out at commemorations of it and the White Terror that followed as seeking to stir up past ethnic grievances.
Such commemorations of 228 dovetail with trends in identity. To this extent, cultural depictions of 228 and the White Terror have at times become anachronistic, in that fears about what would occur in Taiwan as a result of annexation by China are projected onto the historical memory of Taiwan’s past. With Taiwanese identity on the rise, especially among young people, this will be another reason why the 228 Massacre continues to be remembered and commemorated in Taiwan.