Taiwan Matters!

Words do mean things

The language that people use to write about Taiwan is a touchy subject, and many people can't get it right. Or they can, but they won't. There are many examples, but I just want to talk about one today: The 228 Massacre.

I used to say "228 Incident" myself, but when someone corrected me in 2007 and pointed out that I should instead refer to the tragedy as a "massacre," I immediately changed, and I'll never use that term again. I can't count the times since then that I've come across writings about the massacre which refer to it as an "incident," and some recent encounters with the latter term made me want to write about it.

It's particularly disturbing that the Taipei Times has recently been avoiding use of the word "massacre." The paper previously seemed to prefer the term to describe the historical event, but recently, there have been too many instances where the word "massacre" has been left out entirely. So I have to wonder why. Are the editors asleep, or do they just not care anymore?

When soldiers shoot down civilians in the streets with machine guns or collect large groups of people and bury them alive — when it happens to between 18,000 and 30,000 people (10,000 in just the first month) — it's not a mere "incident," and describing it that way is unbelievably coldhearted.

I hope that you, the reader, will not fall prey to the bad habit of describing the horror of the 228 Massacre as a mere "incident" or just by the number "228," and I hope you can help to rectify the situation by teaching others to follow your example.

Flashback
Here are a couple of my older posts about the 228 Massacre.
• February 28, 2011: My thoughts on February 28, 2011
• February 28, 2007: Remembering two 228 [Massacres]

Cross-posted at It's Not Democracy, It's A Conspiracy!

Labels: 228 Massacre, Tim Maddog, 二二八大屠殺

Lest we forget the 228 Massacre (二二八大屠殺) of 1947

What am I thinking about on this 64th anniversary of one of the most horrific events in Taiwan's history?

I'm remembering with dismay that the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is still in power -- even after behaving as colonizers for over six decades -- because they still use illicit methods to get elected. Here are some examples:

* Vote buying is rampant even within their own party's Central Standing Committee, but they keep putting the guilty ones right back in.

* In the January 2010 legislative by-elections, "Two of the three seats up for grabs […] in Taoyuan, Taichung and Taitung counties were left vacant by former KMT legislators found guilty of vote-buying," reminding us of their "tradition of buying votes."

* Lee Min-yung (李敏勇) reminds readers: "The roots of vote-buying can be found in the Chinese Nationalist Party's (KMT) long hold on power and its system for distributing the spoils of government."

* Laurence Eyton enlightens in a 2004 piece in the Asia Times Online: "[The Chinese KMT] has traditionally used its wealth to engage in what it calls 'traditional electoral practices', ie vote buying […]"

I'm reminded that the Chinese KMT still uses thuggery to maintain their power. Here are some examples:

* When disgraced former Toronto-based Government Information Office (GIO) official Kuo Kuan-ying (郭冠英) returned to Taiwan, he was picked up at airport and "assisted" by thugs in black shirts assigned by Bamboo Union (竹聯幫) gang leader Chang An-le (張安樂).

* People wearing black T-shirts and vests bearing the name of the Matsu Temple (大天后宮) physically remove college students from a protest against the Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) government's policies regarding students from China.

* Despite denials by police, experience should tell you who the guys in the black shirts helping to defend Chinese envoy Chen Yunlin (陳雲林) are.

* Read my post about the movie "Formosa Betrayed," which dramatizes real incidents involving the Chinese KMT, including their use of gangsters to carry out the assassination of a political dissident on American soil.

I'm reminded that the Chinese KMT is still distorting history. Here are some examples:

* A Taipei Times editorial reminds readers about Ma's empty promises: "So much for saying that the memorial hall [renaming] issue was 'not a pressing matter.'"

* Here's a photo of a display from the renovated 228 Memorial Museum which paints former dictator Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) as "recovering … order" instead of as being the perpetrator of the massacre.

* Exhibits at the newly-renovated museum paint peaceful protesters as "mobs."

* President Ma pretends that the Chinese KMT has "dealt with its past" to the same extent the government of Germany has done since World War II.

* On the blog of Taipei City councilor Chien Yu-yen (簡余晏) you can read some of the details (Hanzi) and see photos (containing Hanzi text and a little bit of English) and video (Taiwanese and Mandarin audio, Hanzi text and a little bit of English) detailing some of the changes to the museum.

And I'm reminded that while Chinese KMT chairman Ma Ying-jeou -- elected as Taiwan's president in 2008 on a promise of "no unification, no independence and no use of force" (不統、不獨、不武) -- has long claimed to support democracy, he still doesn't. Here are some examples:

* Remember the days when Ma was publicly against direct presidential elections.

* Remember when the Chinese KMT boycotted their own referendum about Taiwan's participation in the United Nations.

* The Executive Yuan's (行政院) Referendum Review Committee (公投審議委員會) turned down proposed referendums on the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) with China three times, despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that it had more than enough signatures and support in polls!

* In mid-2009, the Ma government reverted the Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall (臺灣民主紀念館) to its former name: the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall (蔣中正紀念堂).

And I wouldn't be able to forget, no matter how hard I tried, that while Ma is in office as president of Taiwan, he primarily serves China. Here are some very recent examples:

* Ma wants people to stop calling China "China" and to call it "the mainland" or "the other side."

* A short time later, Beijing "praises" Ma for this.

* The Philippine government deports 14 Taiwanese suspects to China, basing the decision on a "one China" policy, yet Ma places zero blame on China.

People of Taiwan, when are you going to stop this from ever happening again?

If you have additional relevant examples to include in the topics above, please submit them in the comments below (use the HTML above the comment submission box for links) or via e-mail.

Further reading:
* Names and faces of some of the victims of the 228 Massacre (Hanzi)

* Wednesday, February 28, 2007 on Taiwan Matters!: Remembering two 228 Incidents (written before someone pointed out the obvious: that it should be referred to as the "228 Massacre" instead)

* Monday, March 1, 2004 on It's Not Democracy, It's A Conspiracy!: Hand-in-hand for peace (about my participation in the "228 Hand-in-Hand Rally" at 2:28 PM on Saturday, February 28, 2004)

* Monday, February 21, 2011 on Strait Talk: It's Taiwan, not China... Tales from Formosa, The Beautiful Island: "Formosa Displayed, Formosa Betrayed: Taiwan's 228 Museum Rewriting History?"

Dates with disaster: Taiwan, 台灣, 228 Massacre, 二二八大屠殺, 228 Incident, 二二八事件, Ma Ying-jeou, 馬英九, Chinese Nationalist Party, 中國國民黨, Kuomintang, KMT, 國民黨

Cross-posted at It's Not Democracy, It's A Conspiracy!

Labels: 228 Incident, 228 Massacre, Chinese Nationalist Party, KMT, Kuomintang, Ma Ying-jeou, Taiwan, 中國國民黨, 二二八事件, 二二八大屠殺, 台灣, 國民黨 Tim Maddog, 馬英九

First, the one less talked about

On February 28, 1980, while Lin Yi-hsiung (林義雄) was in prison on charges stemming from the Kaohsiung Incident, his seven-year old twin daughters and his mother were brutally murdered while their home was under 24-hour surveillance by secret police under the rule of Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國). Another daughter survived that incident despite being stabbed several times, but grew up without her grandmother or her two sisters. This horrific act took place 33 years after another incident which led to the deaths (including executions on the street), political imprisonment, and disappearance of tens of thousands of people in Taiwan at the hands of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) under the lead of the aforementioned Chiang's father, Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石).

The "228 Incident" of 1947
On February 27, 1947, a woman named Lin Chiang-mai (林江邁) was selling cigarettes illegally on a Taipei street when KMT officers attempted to confiscate her wares. In the struggle, the officer struck the woman in the head with his gun, and she later died. Witnesses to the event chased the officers away from the scene. They fled to a police station, and when citizens gathered there to ask for justice, the officer fled out a back door.

The next day, February 28, a larger crowd gathered at the Governor-General's Office to protest, but were met with machine gun fire. This doesn't sound like the "uprising" the China Post and the BBC's Caroline Gluck would like you to believe it was.

In the subsequent months and years, Taiwan's intellectuals were methodically killed off, jailed under false pretenses, and terrorized by authorities in the period of Taiwan's history that is known as "White Terror."

Sixty years after the 228 Incident of 1947, the embattled presidential wannabe and disgraced former KMT chairman Ma Ying-jeou (馬應九) and his minions are still obfuscating history with their whines of "Stop bringin' up old stuff" and "Japan did it." Yet until this "transitional justice" is dealt with, this "old stuff" will continue to be raised against the party which perpetrated the crime.

More info
Articles from today's Taipei Times:

* Decades later, 228 still haunts Taiwan
* Hardline academics blame Japan for 228 Incident
* Amendment calling for 228 trial halted by pan-blue camp
* A series of 7 more articles: The 228 incident: Sixty years on
* An op-ed by Randall Schriver which states bluntly that "senior US officials are largely unaware and ignorant of what transpired in Taiwan after Feb. 27, 1947, including the White Terror era."
* Today's editorial: Historical record is key to justice

UPDATE 1:
The March 1, 2007 edition of the Taipei Times continues the "228 Incident: Sixty years on" series with four more articles.

Other blogposts:

* Michael Turton on Taiwan's Own Holocaust Revisionists
* Wulingren wrote last Friday about a May 24, 1947 article in The Nation.
* Previous posts on INDIAC
* Previous posts on Taiwan Matters!

Videos (most in Taiwanese or Chinese with Hanzi subtitles):

* 台灣的歷史－戰後與二二八事件 [Taiwan History - Post-WW2 and the 228 Incident]
* A 2-part video from CassidyTW: 二二八60週年 - 紀念殞落的228菁英 [60th anniversary of the 228 Incident - In memory of the fallen elite of 228] (lots more links there)

UPDATE 2: Here's a 3-part video from SET that I uploaded to YouTube:
* Part 1/3 6'58"
* Part 2/3 8'01"
* Part 3/3 9'33"
* Here's another video to think about when the KMT pulls their "Stop bringing up old stuff" act and tries to sweep 228 back under the rug where it couldn't be talked about for so long. Via the Hanzi titles which accompany the images onscreen, it reminds viewers how France, Poland, and Germany haven't done so with the Holocaust, but have instead faced up to that dark part of history. In contrast, every city in Taiwan has downtown streets named after Chiang Kai-shek (中正路). That page also has links to WMV versions of the video. Check out the plethora of links listed at the end of the video as well.
* And here's a WMV video of a Taiwan "anthem" performed karaoke style (they sang right through the bridge) by the president, the V-P, and lots of DPP stalwarts.