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Making sense of the 228 Incident
By Chen Yi-shen 陳儀深
During his speech to commemorate the 228 Incident, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九)
compared it to the “Jasmine Revolutions” now underway in North Africa and the
Middle East, saying that both events were about the fight for democracy and
freedom. He also said that Ong Thiam-teng , who at the time was president of the
Taipei Tea Merchants’ Association and a member of the Provincial Council and was
killed in the wake of the incident, was an idealistic intellectual. In short, Ma
said that the 228 Incident was not a conflict between ethnic groups and that it
had nothing to do with the subsequent Taiwanese independence movement. Rather,
he described it as an inevitable movement of popular resistance against
injustice.
In the past, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) denigrated the 228 Incident as
having been started by “criminals and Japanese instigators” or being a “revolt
by Taiwanese independence rebels.” This formulation meant to justify the KMT’s
suppression of the uprising and deny its responsibility. While this is more than
enough to make one angry, the way Ma, in his capacity as president and KMT
chairman, is now trying to paint a distorted picture of the 228 Incident is
equally disconcerting.
Earlier this year, he paid his respects at the mausoleum of former president
Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) in Touliao (頭寮), Taoyuan County. Then he went to Taichung
for the opening of a memorial hall dedicated to General Sun Li-jen (孫立人), where
he expressed great sadness and sympathy for Sun and other generals who he said
had been “unjustly accused.” This is an example the KMT’s version of
transitional justice — pandering to both sides.
Ong was a key figure in the 228 Settlement Committee (二 二 八事件處理委員會), and his
place in history is closely linked to the “32 Demands” drawn up by the
committee. Ma has publicly praised the work of the late Academia Sinica research
fellow Hwang Chang-chien (黃彰健), who highlighted the first of the 32 demands,
which was for government forces to hand over their weapons, saying that this
amounted to a demand for Taiwan independence.
In comparison, Ma’s recent comments are much more evenhanded. The 228 Settlement
Committee wanted troops around Taiwan to temporarily disarm and hand over their
weapons to Settlement Committee branch offices and the gendarmerie, so as to
prevent further bloodshed. Given the fact that soldiers and police around Taiwan
had been shooting citizens at will, this demand was surely quite reasonable.
Indeed, the Settlement Committee’s 32 demands had little or nothing to do with
Taiwan independence. Nevertheless, on March 2, 1947, governor-general Chen Yi
(陳儀) flatly rejected the 32 demands, using them as evidence of criminal activity
by those seized in the wave of arrests that followed.
On March 10, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) cited the “improper” demands of
the 228 Settlement Committee as the main reason for dispatching troops to
Taiwan. This is why Wu Ko-tai (吳克泰), an eyewitness to the 228 Incident, said:
“The measures taken to deal with the incident were played out by Chiang Kai-shek
and Chen Yi acting in concert ... Just like Chen, Chiang can hardly escape
culpability for the bloody suppression that followed.”
If Ma sincerely believes that Ong was unjustly accused, then his view runs
contrary to that of Chiang and Chen. In that case, he should do his utmost to
help Ong’s family find out what happened to him and agree with those who accuse
Chiang and Chen as being responsible for the 288 Incident. He should withdraw
his support for Hwang’s historical interpretation and stop insisting on the
preservation of the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall (中正紀念堂) in its present form.
Only then will Ma achieve logical consistency and demonstrate that his apologies
are sincere.
The point that needs stressing is that nobody was held accountable for the
massacre. On the contrary, Peng Meng-chi (彭孟緝), then head of the Provincial
Garrison Command, was given an important position and allowed to impose White
Terror throughout the 1950s. These events are what fueled the Taiwanese
independence movement as it came to the fore in later years. As to Ma, one
cannot but admire the man for the happy and amiable face he presents while
trying to erase historical facts and deny the KMT’s responsibility, and the way
he still manages to fool people into voting for him and his party.
Chen Yi-shen is an associate research fellow in the Institute
of Modern History at Academia Sinica.
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