TAICHUNG (Taiwan News) — President-elect Lai Ching-te (賴清德) will not make any bold moves to advance transitional justice.
Much has been accomplished but further moves will produce diminishing returns relative to other political goals from Lai’s perspective.
There are two big remaining steps the Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) administration has largely left untackled that other countries have in their transitional justice processes. There remain a considerable number of authoritarian symbols and the issue of what to do about the perpetrators of human rights abuses during the White Terror.
While there is public support for transitional justice, it is not a top issue for most voters. So pressure on the Tsai administration has been relatively low.
Unlike some other cultures, Taiwanese have presented their own White Terror history with horror, sadness and a lesson to learn from. They have not framed it in such a way as to provoke bitterness, and hate to stoke a desire for revenge.
During the Tsai administration topics such as changing the money to remove the dictator Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) or the Chinese nationalist revolutionary Sun Yat-sen (孫逸仙) or doing something about the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial came up in the press every year or two. The government response was to say the topic was under review. Then nothing happened.
Protected symbols
As of October 2020, the government claimed that nearly 70% of Chiang Kai-shek statues and other authoritarian symbols had been removed. The remaining statues and authoritarian symbols are the hardest ones politically to remove and will clash with key constituencies. Specifically the police, firefighters, some government bodies, and most crucially the military.
Tsai has worked hard to bolster the military, both in terms of raising the budget and the amount of weaponry, but also in terms of morale. The military has long been dominated by pan-blue supporters and has historic ties to the KMT and of course the former Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek.
Even if only a minority in the military objected to changing the authoritarian-era emblems of their branches of the military and institutions, that could lead to resignations and damage morale.
From the perspective of the Tsai administration keeping the morale and cohesiveness in the military is a higher priority than appeasing the relatively small percentage of the population for whom the issue of transitional justice is a major issue.
It is a similar situation with the remaining Chiang Kai-shek statues. Most of the remaining ones are at institutions or sites where there are people who still view Chiang as a hero for fighting the Japanese and keeping Taiwan out of the hands of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
For example, there is a statue of Chiang in a public park not far from my home in Taichung. However, the park is a dedicated memorial to the 823 Kinmen Artillery Battle (what is usually referred to as the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis) in 1958 and displays many old planes, tanks and other military hardware from the era.
Chiang was the leader at the time of the crisis and won out in the end. If his statue was removed from this park there would be a backlash from veterans and some in the military who honor his role in the crisis.
Retribution or reconciliation
Other countries that have undergone transitional justice have done so through one of two methods: retribution or reconciliation. Chile chose retribution and when former dictator General Augusto Pinochet died under house arrest awaiting trial, hundreds of his officers did serve jail time.
South Africa took the other path and set up a Truth and Reconciliation Commission that conducted hearings that included both the perpetrators of human rights abuses on behalf of the apartheid regime as well as victims to bring understanding and some closure to everybody. If they testified truthfully, perpetrators could be given amnesty.
Which of these two standard approaches is better has been widely debated in transitional justice circles. I have never heard anyone debate in favor of Taiwan’s approach, which so far has been to sweep it under the rug and hope the problem goes away.
As far as I know the only people to face any punishment for human rights crimes committed during the White Terror were those involved in the killing of dissident writer Henry Liu (劉宜良). That was only because Liu was an American citizen and murder took place on U.S. soil.
In the end several Bamboo Union gangsters and two Taiwanese intelligence officers, including Vice Admiral Wang Hsi-ling (汪希苓), head of the Ministry of National Defense's intelligence bureau at the time, were fingered for ordering the murder.
Similarly, the only case resembling anything like a truth and reconciliation situation is also singular as far as I know. In 2021, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Huang Kuo-shu (黃國書) was accused of being a snitch for the KMT when he was a student activist during the 1980s.
To his credit, Huang confessed, in spite of the fact it would have been difficult to obtain hard proof of the fact due to privacy laws. He resigned from the DPP and when his term was up he did not run for re-election to atone for what he had done.
The police, military and government are riddled with people who participated in the repression of the White Terror era. Given the lack of significant public pressure, the Tsai administration has quietly just ignored it fearing it would be too disruptive.
There may be another reason why the Tsai administration does not want to open this can of worms. During that era, anyone who got ahead in life had to play ball with the KMT in some form or another.
Often it was simply in the form of bribes, but in other cases it could be far more insidious. Tsai’s own father managed to rise from being an auto mechanic, to having his own shop and eventually getting rich in property speculation.
Many other top DPP figures also had parents that got ahead in life. Do they really want to know the details on how they managed to navigate the White Terror to do so? Not a chance.
No drama
For all of these reasons, when Lai assumes the presidency he is not going to make any big moves. He will likely continue to chip away at it, but do not expect anything dramatic.
He has made this pretty clear. During his presidential campaign, if he said anything at all about transitional justice, it was so innocuous the press did not take much notice.
If he had any big plans the time to have announced it was during the 77th anniversary of the 228 Massacre in February. He called for more education and stressed the need to firmly unite, safeguard security, promote democracy, and ensure peace and prosperity to make sure similar events do not happen again.
One step he might take is to change the money. He could do it in one big bang under the guise of modernizing a rather outdated-looking currency, or he might just change a bit at a time to minimize backlash.
The one to watch is the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial. That topic has attracted significant press in the past and will no doubt again.
Many do want to see it re-purposed to something else, though the proposals vary widely. Some want it to be turned into a Democracy Memorial, others want to keep the huge statue of Chiang but turn the memorial into one for all past presidents, while others have even suggested moving the legislature there.
It will be interesting to see if the Lai administration tackles that.
