TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — The number of people executed, wrongfully imprisoned, or persecuted by the state during Taiwan’s nearly 40-year period of martial law will be updated from 8,088 to 17,941, after additional victims were identified through government records.
The additional victims have been identified through records of compensation that were paid to victims of what is often known as the "White Terror." Legislation targeting the injustices and “illegal acts of state” carried out during the White Terror was first passed in 1995, and included provisions for compensating victims.
National Human Rights Museum Curator Shih-fang Hung (洪世芳) said after concluding inter-agency meetings on who should be included, the number was set to be revised to 17,941. He said work continues to be done to understand the full scale of the persecution.
Hung said the persecution and violence of the White Terror were carried out in the name of anti-communism. He added an improved international understanding of events would help prevent repeats of such large-scale and systematic oppression.
“Foreigners may be more familiar with international political incidents that occurred around the 1980s,” he said. “However, since 1945, the authoritarian government at that time carried out high-intensity suppression and human rights persecution based on the fear of the expansion of communist forces,” Hung said.
U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower in a motorcade with Chiang Kai-shek in Taipei, 1960, 11 years after martial law was declared. (Wikipedia, Lao Ye photo)
In the 1980s, several incidences of state-sanctioned killings received international media attention. Among them was the 1984 case of Taiwanese-American journalist Henry Liu (劉宜良) who was killed in the U.S. by gang members reportedly acting on the instructions of the then ruling Kuomintang (KMT). Also, a U.S. based academic Chen Wen-chen (陳文成) was killed in detainment when visiting Taiwan in 1981.
According to the Transitional Justice Commission, the period between 1950 and 1955 represented a peak in political persecutions, and it was also when the most death penalties were handed down to victims, Hung said. He added that Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石）personal abuses of power are well understood by the international community, but institutionalization of oppression also played an important role.
“The Taiwanese people were oppressed through the three-in-one authoritarian regime of the martial law system, the mobilization and anti-insurgency laws, and the party-state system,” Hung said. He said that evidence of this is readily apparent in the museum’s archives and collections, which are displayed through themed exhibitions and are open to the public.
Through international attention and exchanges, we can understand both the international commonalties and local specifics of Taiwan's white terror and authoritarian rule, reflect on historical lessons, and hope that this kind of large-scale and systematic violence never happens again.”
The White Terror began in 1949 and officially ended in 1992. Throughout the 1990s, Taiwan began its transition away from the KMT-led single-party state system towards democracy, though the legacy of authoritarianism is still felt in Taiwan today.
The full record of the victims of the White Terror can be viewed online, with a marking in red indicating the victim was killed.
Red denotes the victim died by execution, gunshot wound, critical injuries, or never left prison alive. Embossed denotes a lifelong sentence. The new list identifies 1,824 executed or never found, and 16,117 who suffered from repression, defamation, or financial / physical harm. pic.twitter.com/B3XDRNMOVn
— Min Chao 〔錯誤字元無法儲存〕 (@wordsfromtaiwan) April 27, 2023
