Former victims, human rights activists and opposition Democratic Progressive Party lawmakers have properly lambasted the MJIB for its caviler tossing of documents on hundreds of former political prisoners and even body parts into an abandoned building on the grounds of the former "Ankang Reception Center" in Hsintien, Taipei County.

This location was used during the 1970s and 1980s as a site for the interrogation and torture of "seditionists" and other detainees by the main secret police organs of the KMT authoritarian regime, namely the now defunct Taiwan Garrison Command and the MJIB itself.

MJIB officials attempted to excuse their negligence and blatant violation of the 2002 National Archives Administration Law, which required the transfer of such documents to the National Archives Administration, by claiming that the data was "merely administrative."

Such excuses are self-serving nonsense that only displays the contempt with which the MJIB views the efforts by the Taiwan people to rediscover the history of the victimization of tens of thousands of citizens, including many new immigrants from the China mainland, for actual or alleged "sedition" under the authoritarian KMT regime.

During its eight years in office, the DPP administration under former president Chen Shui-bian had been able to secure the declassification and transfer to the National Archives of considerable secret documentation on martial law cases held by the plethora of secret police, security and intelligence organizations under the KMT martial law regime, including the feared and now defunct Taiwan Garrison Command and the Investigation Bureau itself.

Much of this material included military court judgments against alleged "bandit communist agents," Taiwan independence advocates, liberal intellectuals, journalists or even errant MJIB or TGC agents or victims of internal KMT power struggles as well as extensive materials on the Feb. 28 massacre of 1947 and the KMT regime's crackdown on the "Formosa" democratic movement after the Kaohsiung Incident on Dec. 10, 1979.

However, such efforts were both inadequate and frustrated by the refusal of government agencies and the KMT itself to turn over "white terror" related files to the NAA for historical research or legal examination.

The exposure of the MJIB's tossing of such files as so much garbage into an abandoned interrogation center is stark proof of such deliberate obstruction.

Moreover, the MJIB's files also hint at the mountain of documentation and information on the "front-end" of the process of political persecution and human rights violations, namely surveillance, arrest and interrogation, including the use of torture to extract "confessions" that would be creatively rewritten by prosecutors into "the facts of the crimes" to be used for martial law judges to pass sentences of death or long imprisonment.

Our need to know

As Taiwan Association for Truth and Reconciliation Chairman Wu Nai-teh observed Wednesday, "Taiwan's modern history cannot be properly written" without the release of all such secret files still hoarded by the MJIB, the Ministry of National defense and many other government ministries and agencies and, last but not least, the KMT itself.

Even more urgent is our society's need to discover the victimizers as well as the victims and ensure that the persons who ordered wrongful arrests and executions and torture and other violations of human right and even crimes against humanity committed during the KMT authoritarian rule bear legal and moral responsibility.

"Transitional justice" is not a luxury or a process of vengeance but an essential process to face and heal past wounds and divisions in our society and to prevent the sowing of the seeds for further violations by state authorities of basic human rights by allowing those who ordered such actions to escape responsibility with impunity.

In sum, the acquisition of such files and the recovery of the full history of the "white terror" in Taiwan is vitally important for each and every Taiwan citizen because the process of truth and reconciliation is the best guarantee that no one, no matter what their political beliefs, will not become future victims of state violence or human rights violations.

Hence, we strongly urge President Ma Ying-jeou to demonstrate the political courage and will to order all government agencies and the KMT itself to turn over "228" or "white terror" related files from the martial law era to turn such documentation to the National Archives and an impartial investigation committee or, preferably, a legally grounded "truth and reconciliation" commission for the martial law period.

The exercise of leadership by the KMT government in transitional justice can help heal Taiwan's deep political divisions and assist the KMT improve its own image.

Otherwise, President Ma should explain to Taiwan's 23 million people why he and the KMT are unwilling or unable to fulfill this task.