Today is the 74th anniversary of the 228 Incident, the brutal crackdown of an anti-government uprising. President Tsai Ing-wen and Premier Su Tseng-chang attended a memorial ceremony in Kaohsiung on Sunday. Tsai gave posthumous “certificates of innocence” to three victims of the 228 Incident, who were represented at the ceremony by their families.
Three people, each a relative of a victim of the 228 Incident, received a certificate exonerating the victims of wrongdoing. In the past, this ceremony was held each year at Taipei’s 228 Peace Memorial Park. This year for the first time, it unfolded in Kaohsiung.
Tsai Ing-wen
President
The Chiaotou Incident and the Kaohsiung Incident were watershed events for Taiwan’s road to democratization. Today when we talk about 228, we must remember its lessons and not repeat the same mistakes. The 228 Incident was not an isolated event that occurred in the spring of 1947. Later there was the “Ching-hsiang” crackdown. White Terror and authoritarianism cast a pall over daily life in Taiwan. These are the most painful memories of all of Taiwan’s ethnic groups.
Reflecting on Kaohsiung’s painful past, Tsai said there were key lessons to be drawn.
Tsai Ing-wen
President
Only a democratic system can produce a self-disciplined government with the courage for self-reflection. To prevent tragedy from striking again, we must institutionalize human rights values into the DNA of our government system. That is an important goal for our campaign for transitional justice.
Tsai said the country should reflect on and remember the pain of its history, in order to cherish its hard-won democracy. At the ceremony, relatives of the massacre’s victims urged Tsai to erase symbols of Taiwan''s authoritarian past.
Wang Wen-hung
Representative of victims’ families
How can there be any reason to continue to idolize that murderer? Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall should long have been converted for a different purpose. The bodies of Chiang Kai-shek and his son, buried in Daxi, should be moved to Xizhi District’s Wuzhi Mountain Military Cemetery, so that they can be at rest, so the ghosts of the father and son can no longer stoke partisan conflict.
In the view of victims’ families, Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall and the burial place of the Chiangs are problems long left unresolved. Even with the passage of time, the loss of their loved ones casts a long shadow hard to forget.
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