Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
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Photo Credit: Francisco Anzola/WikiCommons/CC BY 3.0
TODAY MARKS THE 38TH anniversary of the lifting of the 38 years of martial law that Taiwan saw under the KMT’s one-party rule. Taiwan continues to hold the record for the second-longest martial law period in the world, second only to Syria.
But today’s anniversary means that Taiwan has now spent more time free of martial law than under it. As such, yesterday’s transition was commemorated by civil society groups that seek to keep alive the memory of Taiwan’s many decades of martial law, as well as of the political persecutions that happened during the period known as White Terror.
Still, the political present in Taiwan should remind us that the specter of the authoritarian past still haunts us. This is nowhere more visible than in how the KMT, the party that instituted martial law, commemorated yesterday’s transition. KMT politicians such as Hou You-yi claimed that the present is similar to a return to martial law.
The KMT–Taiwan’s former authoritarian party, which continues to exist even in democratic times–has alleged that the “Great Recall Movement” directed against KMT legislators is a form of political persecution orchestrated by the DPP. KMT legislators have framed this to be “Green Communism” or a “Green Terror”, which they allege to be worse than the White Terror.
The KMT’s unrepentance is highlighted in how party chair Eric Chu was reluctant to apologize after KMT recall organizer Sung Chien-liang appeared in court dressed as a Nazi, carrying a copy of Mein Kampf, and performing a Nazi salute. Sung was in court over signature fraud in the course of recall signature collection, which he alleged was the result of DPP political persecution. In dressing as a Nazi, Sung hoped to compare the DPP to Nazis.
One notes that the recalls are not DPP-organized, but instead are a reaction by civic groups to the KMT’s actions in the past two years. The KMT’s actions are broadly perceived as a power grab through the one branch of government it controls, the legislature. This has been attempted by seeking to pry prosecutorial and security powers away from the executive and judiciary branches of governments, drastically cutting the government budget in order to set the Lai administration up for failure, and freezing the Constitutional Court.
Recall is a constitutional right in Taiwan. The KMT’s claims prove a strange reaction to a basic right of the citizenry. Moreover, if a “Green Terror” worse than the “White Terror” is being carried out, one wonders where the tens of thousands of dead bodies are at present.
All this goes to show that the KMT has not confronted its authoritarian past, instead doubling down on it. And it is also important to note that since authoritarian times, the KMT has reinvented itself as a political party that is no longer at odds with the CCP, but serves as its proxy domestically in Taiwan.
Arguably, this is due to structural factors. The KMT could only maintain power in Taiwan for so many decades because of external backing from the US, allowing its members to constitute a privileged political and economic class in Taiwan.
With democratization, members of the KMT have since lost the privileges they once enjoyed. Consequently, members of the KMT may believe that they would be restored as a ruling class if they were to switch external backers to China, and assist in facilitating the political unification of Taiwan and China. This also goes to explain why, just as Communist China was vilified during authoritarian times, the KMT has since embraced conspiratorial rhetoric seeking to demonize the US in the form of “US-skeptic discourse.”
That this same party now alleges the DPP, which emerged from Taiwan’s democracy movement, to have become an authoritarian party. This act serves to drive home the point of how the KMT not only has failed to confront its past, but cheapens Taiwan’s past historical tragedies by appropriating this history in order to retain power. In this framing, Taiwan’s martial law was simply a tragedy that affected all Taiwanese, without any clear cause or any responsible parties.
At times, the KMT has simply claimed that the many years of martial law were necessary as a bulwark against Communism–never mind that the KMT has now aligned itself with the forces that it once fought against. And yet, when the KMT does make allowances about the tragedy of the martial law period, martial law is usually framed as a tragedy without a clear perpetrator. Or the attempt is made to frame waishengren that came to Taiwan as, in fact, those who suffered most during the White Terror, whether that is citing that many waishengren were, in fact, among those killed, or in highlighting the suffering of military dependents’ villages. In this sense, in suggesting that those with ties to the KMT were the most victimized during the White Terror, the KMT also seeks to avoid responsibility.
But that democratization in Taiwan is not complete is self-apparent in the stranglehold that the KMT continues to hold local politics in Taiwan, maintaining control through patronage and clientelist networks. It was only ever from 2016 to 2024 that a non-KMT party has ever held the majority in the Taiwanese legislature, raising questions for triumphalist views that term Taiwan to have completed its transition to democracy after two transitions of presidential power–never mind that a former authoritarian party was allowed to persist in the course of Taiwan’s democratization, retaining access to extensive resources from property seizures during the authoritarian period.
Indeed, the KMT has failed to accept democratic institutions. In seeking to wholly undermine government institutions through the scorched earth tactics it has embraced in past years, the KMT shows that when it cannot hold power in government, it simply seeks to destroy what it cannot control.
The past haunts the present in this light. And that the end of martial law was only 38 years ago should also remind us that the truth behind the past injustices committed by the KMT is officially unknown, whether that be the murder of Lin Yi-hsiung’s family, the killing of Chen Wen-chen, and others. The system of surveillance maintained by the KMT was totalizing and many revelations have been delayed because they would destroy many of the long-standing ties that exist between neighbors in Taiwan. Today should remind us that the task of democracy is yet incomplete, then.