Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Aboriginal rights key to statehood

Chiang Tzu-yang 江子揚

Transitional justice has played an important role in recent historical democratization processes. In some democratic nations, transitional justice has focused on the state’s past oppression and assimilation of ethnic communities. The US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand have come to grips with the oppression of indigenous ethnic communities under government policies of the past.

Juan Chun-ta (阮俊達), a researcher specializing in indigenous affairs, has published a thesis titled Indigenous Peoples and Transitional Justice: An Ethnic Mainstreaming Perspective.

Meaningless rhetoric by Gou, KMT on US arms

Chen Kuan-Fu 陳冠甫

Last month, Hon Hai Group chairman Terry Gou (郭台銘) said that arms procurement should not involve buying weaponry “just for the sake of it” and that “Taiwan should stop purchasing arms from the US.”

The remarks by Gou, who is contesting the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential primary, evoke memories of attempts by the KMT and the People First Party during former president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) administration to sabotage purchases of military equipment.

Democracy’s Achilles’ heel

Taipei Times Editorial

There should be little discussion that Taiwan’s hard-won democracy is vibrant. However, people interested in politics and current affairs often overlook the fact that the preoccupations of many may lie elsewhere, and for legitimate reasons.

That this is problematic is doubly true in Taiwan, as there is a real argument that the country’s sovereignty is in jeopardy. This is not simply because this perceived apathy by swathes of the public allows the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to manipulate the debate in the interests of its “united front” efforts, but also because the defense of Taiwan’s sovereignty may well depend on US military intervention or support. This intervention might not be forthcoming if Taiwanese are not perceived to be helping themselves.

The truth must be uncovered now

Chou Ni-an 周倪安

The legislature convened a question-and-answer session on April 8 to hear about progress on Transitional Justice Commission’s request for documents from the National Security Bureau (NSB) concerning the 228 Incident, the 1981 death of Carnegie Mellon University assistant professor Chen Wen-chen (陳文成), the murders of Lin I-hsiung’s (林義雄) mother and twin daughters, and the Kaohsiung Incident.

To this end, the National Development Council’s National Archives Administration has embarked on a sixth collection of files and requested that the bureau provide 176 political files from the Martial Law period.

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