The Taiwan Association for Truth and Reconciliation yesterday called on the government to return letters written by political prisoners before their execution to their families.

“We hereby ask President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) to hand these private letters ‘detained’ by the state for decades to relatives [of the executed prisoners] and apologize to them on behalf of the state,” association chairman Chen Chun-hung (陳俊宏) told a news conference in Taipei.