TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — The National Security Bureau has fully declassified all political archives from Taiwan’s martial law era.
To implement transitional justice and promote the opening of political archives, the NSB conducted a comprehensive self-initiated review over the past 16 months and transferred both physical and digital records to the National Archives Administration, the bureau announced Monday.
Beginning in November 2024, the NSB mobilized personnel to carry out a two-phase review of all archives created before 1992, in accordance with the Political Archives Act and the National Development Council’s review principles and guidelines for political archives.
In the first phase, the NSB reviewed 23,757 volumes and 566,415 individual documents. In June, the administration determined that 1,369 volumes, comprising 51,133 documents, qualified as political archives.
In the second phase, the NSB manually examined each of the 51,133 documents approved as political archives. It then carried out declassification and digitization procedures.
The bureau said all political archives from before 1992 have now been fully declassified and made public in their entirety, without any redactions. The physical files were sealed into 94 boxes and, together with digital copies, delivered in batches to the National Archives Administration, with the final transfer completed Monday.
The bureau said the declassified martial law-era materials cover a wide range of topics, including security and counterintelligence systems, intelligence agency operations, investigations into “subversive” publications and anonymous letters, exit and entry controls on citizens, overseas Taiwanese independence movements, and records and verdicts related to rebellion cases.
