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Reinterpreting a
dictator¡¦s legacy
By Huang Chang-ling and Yeh Hung-ling ¶Àªø¬Â¡A¸iÆF
The National Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall is running a competition ¡X the CKS
Design Competition ¡X to mark the 10th anniversary of the death of Soong Mayling
(§º¬üÄÖ), the third wife of dictator Chiang Kai-shek (½±¤¶¥Û). The objective of the
competition is to ¡§re-establish an emotional connection between the public and
the CKS Memorial Hall, and to produce an identification with emotional and
cultural values.¡¨
As members of a civic group long concerned about transitional justice, we cannot
agree with this, and we also strongly object to official attempts to
re-interpret the despotic leader who presided over the Martial Law era in Taiwan
in this fashion, utterly devoid of any historical or political basis.
We would like to remind the government that one of the main ways to encourage
people to explore history is to open up more of the political archives buried
deep in various government departments¡¦ vaults, and that this process has to go
through the premier, or even the president, so that it be coordinated. A
democratic government should clarify the historical status of the previous
regime and its leaders, and encourage the public to explore the nation¡¦s recent
history.
For us, the most important aspect to all this is that the officials should
release a substantial amount of information in government archives that is still
locked away, purportedly to protect national secrets or the privacy of
individuals.
Former president Chen Shui-bian (³¯¤ô«ó) instructed the Ministry of National
Defense to conduct a major audit of the political archives. Since then, there
has been no investigation of the archives of comparable scale or thoroughness.
If Taiwanese need to establish a feeling for and an identification with a set of
cultural values, it should be a feeling for democratic values and an
identification with the democratic system of government, not with a despotic
ruler.
After the news appeared in the papers, Minister of Culture Lung Ying-tai (ÀsÀ³¥x)
said she felt that the contest was inappropriate and that she would take up the
matter with the people concerned. However, she also said during an interview
that it was too simple to lay the blame for an event in history entirely at the
feet of one individual, a point that we feel is worth addressing.
Of course, other individuals working within the dictatorial system need to take
some responsibility for what went on, but that is not to absolve Chiang, or
lessen his responsibility, given that he was the one in charge.
Lung has written in the past about how seeing a portrait of Chinese leader Mao
Zedong (¤ò¿AªF) hanging on the wall of a German friend¡¦s home sent shivers up her
spine, and she said, in a critical tone, that Mao had blood on his hands. She
has also talked of how she was moved to tears when she handed a farewell letter
written by political dissident Chiang Ping-hsing (¦¿¬±¿³), killed 42 years ago
during the White Terror era, to Chiang¡¦s elder sister.
However, what the public really cares about is how Lung proposes to address,
through policy and resource allocation, the way national exhibition institutions
under her purview ¡X the CKS Memorial Hall, the Jing-Mei Human Rights Memorial
and Cultural Park and the Green Island Human Rights Culture Park ¡X only present
a one-way narrative. The CKS Memorial Hall only talks about Chiang¡¦s
achievements, and is silent on his transgressions, while the Jing-Mei and Green
Island parks focus exclusively on the victims, and have nothing to say about the
individuals or the system that victimized them.
Academics in Taiwan and abroad are still studying and debating the complex
question of how Chiang¡¦s role in history is to be evaluated. However, few would
dispute that even though the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government on
Taiwan had eliminated the threat of underground Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
activity as early as the mid-1950s, and that assistance from the US army
following the outbreak of the Korean War to a considerable degree ensured
political stability and consolidation here in Taiwan, Chiang continued to hold
on to power in Taiwan for several decades.
With thousands of people thrown into jail for their political beliefs, resulting
in countless families being torn apart, Chiang presided over a regime that
trampled on basic human rights for years. Even after Taiwan became a democracy,
the imposing memorial hall named after Chiang reveals nothing of the darker
aspects of his rule.
Even now, Taiwan, a country upheld as a model for how democracy can work in a
Chinese society, retains this artifact that keeps it apart from other emerging
democracies around the world. That is, it still has this building, located in a
prime location in the capital, that drains huge amounts of money from the public
purse, commemorating a dictator who destroyed the lives of so many of its
citizens.
This is not the first time Chiang and Soong have been promoted in a lighthearted
way. The design company run by Demos Chiang (½±¤Í¬f), Chiang¡¦s great-grandson, has
tried to market a gold and silver pendant themed on the dictator. One could say
that it was just the descendant of a famous individual exploiting his pedigree
to sell a few products, but as we have written elsewhere, this behavior is not
only historically myopic, it is also offensive to the families of those executed
for their political convictions by the regime, and is therefore totally
inappropriate.
And if a private company is criticized for such behavior, why shouldn¡¦t a
democratic government, which should be shining a light on a murky part of
history and learning from its past? And, if this government is trying to
re-brand a dictator, in the name of developing products to help out the national
coffers, at the expense of failing to reinforce the ethical values that should
be promoted in a democratic society under the rule of law, then that government
should be roundly chastised.
Huang Chang-ling is chair of the board for the Taiwan Association for Truth
and Reconciliation. Yeh Hung-ling is the association¡¦s chief executive.
Translated by Paul Cooper
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