Several human rights groups yesterday released a joint statement panning former premier Hau Pei-tsun (郝柏村) over his remarks on Sunday that the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) 38-year dictatorship during the Martial Law era was totally justified and that without it, Taiwan would not have become a democracy today.

Hau made the statement defending the KMT’s authoritarian rule during a rally attended by thousands of veteran soldiers at Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in Taipei on Sunday to commemorate the dead dictator’s birthday yesterday.