The commission has laudably released documents from the White Terror era. It has exonerated many imprisoned and killed for political reasons by the regime (did anyone think they were guilty of a crime?). It has embarrassed the KMT. These are good things.
Yet, it is 2021. Not a single person has been punished for the thousands of dead, for those tortured and imprisoned and exiled, for the five decades of authoritarian control. Instead, we are talking about a statue that should have been banished two decades ago. Our democratic transition remains, as Naiteh Wu (吳乃德) wrote in 2005, a transition without justice.
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They won’t take it down anyway
I hope not, but no telling what will happen if the ideologues get the upper hand.
I thought they got the upper hand all the way back on Feb 28, 1947?
Yes, this is ancient history. Everybody needs to just let it go and not use it as a basis for further political tit for tat.
It will be ancient history when the real perpetrator of the massacre of Taiwanese elites no longer has a giant shrine in the middle of Taiwan’s capital.
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No, it’s already ancient history, and having his statue there is a good reminder of that history. In case you haven’t noticed, the other side won. The KMT is on the ropes, and it’s likely they’ll never win another national election again. Getting rid of the statue now amounts to nothing more than political revenge. There’s nothing constructive about kicking your opponent when he’s down. Everybody has to live together in the same small country, and petty moves like this just serve to deepen the divisions.
That’s not at all what happened here. The real reason the KMT is on the ropes isn’t because the DPP won, it’s because the CCP has hijacked the KMT’s “Chinese supremacy” ideologues, and they have pushed anyone who oppose them out.
Part of that is Chinese money doing the talking, and part of it is due to the first-past-the-pole voting system.
Plenty of those being pushed out belong to the “communists are evil and CKS can do no wrong” and “we’d say anything to keep in power and control local economy” camps, who can come back at anytime, probably through Ko Wenjie, who at the moment gets to sit on the fence on the China issue.
Regardless, the KMT is on the ropes, and instead of wasting money and energy on petty statue wars, the government should be focused on solving real problems, like the threat of a Chinese invasion (the surefire way to bring back CKS-style purges) and Taiwan’s demographic cliff.
Interactive art. Sell sponges loaded with red paint. Throw sponges at statue to cover with red blood to represent all them murders what he done.
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There will always be ways to perfect nation, transitional justice is one of them, and no less important.
Whenever people mention to change the name of roads or an area named after CKS or China, the rebuttal is always “it will cost a lot of money, and there are mo important things to do”, however, name changes to roads happens all the time, and no one ever complains about the cost when it’s not related to CKS.
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The transition is already complete. People just need to stop living in the past and give up on those petty revenge urges.
I like that. It’d be even more amazing if there’s prize if you can land a sponge on top of his head.
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I agree with the Milk. There are more pressing matters. I have no problem with keeping it as a tourist attraction or using it as a place to educate people about the history of the 20th century.
The people who hate the KMT and CKS tend to forget that because the Generalissimo and his buddies, Taiwan was spared the horrors of the Great Leap, the Cultural Revolution, Tiananmen, etc. not that I am excusing any crimes committed during the White Terror days.
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Again, that’s baseless bull shit. Taiwan was under US military control immediately after the war, as a former Japanese Pacific colony. There is absolutely no way for the CCP to take Taiwan back in the 1940s through 1980s if the US wanted to keep it out of communist hands.
The news shouldn’t have been announced anyway. Heard that central dpp pissed off with cultural office because they didn’t agree to the announcement.
Meaning it won’t happen. Tsai is way too smart
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I think it’s bullshit, not bull shit, but anyway…
Anything involving an alternate historical timeline is baseless bullshit, including your scenario here. 
So the communist takeover of Taiwan without KMT isn’t also alternate history?