Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

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 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.