Ma, CCA chief 'Killing human rights'
Protesters demand preservation of Chingmei martial law courtroom and prison memorial
By Dennis Engbarth
Taiwan News, Staff Reporter
Page 4
2009-04-30 12:28 AM
Over 50 former political prisoners and human rights activists demanded that Council of Cultural Affairs chairperson Huang Pi-twan resign for "wiping out history" and "murdering human rights" in a rally outside the CCA offices in Taipei City yesterday afternoon.
The protest, which included representatives of the 1950s White Terror Victims Association, the Association of Concern for Taiwan Political Victims, the Association of Elderly Political Victims, the Taiwan Association for Human Rights, the Mainlander Taiwanese Association and the Taiwan Truth and Reconciliation Association, took place one day before a CCA public hearing on its decision to change of the name of the Taiwan Chingmei Human Rights Memorial to the Chingmei Cultural Park.
Built in 1957, the facility, which served as the Chingmei Military Court Detention Center of the feared Taiwan Garrison Command from 1968 through 1987, was turned into a memorial and exhibition center on the human rights violations during the 38 years of martial law rule from May 1949 to July 1987 imposed by the authoritarian Kuomintang and on the domestic and international human rights movements for the rescue of political prisoners and the lifting of martial law in December 2007 under the former Democratic Progressive Party government.
During the "White Terror," over 29,000 political cases were tried in KMT military courts involving over 90,000 persons, over 4,000 of whom were executed.
After President Ma Ying-jeou and his KMT government took office last May, the CCA changed the facility's name to the "Chingmei Cultural Park" and announced earlier this month that it will invite artists to use the buildings for offices, galleries and performances to "attract more visitors" and "soften the park's severity."
Taiwan Truth and Reconciliation Association Director Chen Yao-hua related that the CCA had solicited the views of Taipei County assemblymen, Xindian City officials, community reconstruction specialists and cultural professionals "but failed to consult with any representatives of the people who were the most affected and concerned, namely former political prisoners or their families."
Stating that session was a "formal and false public hearing," Chen, who is also an associate professor of philosophy at Taipei's Soochow University, added that the memorial's exhibits on the history of the former TGC Military Detention Center in the Chingmei facility and in the Green Island Human Rights Memorial, similarly renamed to the "Green Island Culture Park," on the former political prison island had been removed.
Chen also related that the former military courtroom and the Number One courtroom, which had been used for used for many political trials, including the "Formosa Eight" sedition case in March 1980, have already been "wrecked" and that the judges bench and other furniture "stored in toilets or put outside."
Several former political prisoners wore placards with their names and their jail terms shouted slogans calling for the "Down with the Assassin of the Human Rights Park!" and and "Return our Human Rights Park" while younger members held up "before and after" pictures of executed political prisoners which had been taken to prove to the late KMT autocrat Chiang Kai-shek that death sentences had been carried out.
Former political prison Chen Ying-tai, who served a 10-year sentence in Green Island, told The Taiwan News that "Ma wants to wipe away the history of the White Terror."
Former presidential policy advisor Hsieh Tsung-min, who was detained for over six years in the Chingmei military detention center in the late 1960s and 1970s, said that "Ma wants to wipe out all historical traces that the KMT imprisoned or executed political prisoners" and said the CCA was promoting a "culture of blood" by whitewashing the political persecution under the KMT martial law rule.
DPP Kaohsiung City Mayor Chen Chu, who was detained at the Chingmei facility and tried for "sedition" in its military courtroom in early 1980, urged the CCA to "restore and preserve this historical site in its original form as much as possible."
