Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

As Taiwan commemorated the 69th anniversary of the 228 Massacre, it was heartening to see president-elect Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) pledge to pursue transitional justice and declassify more official documents about the Incident. This decision to confront human rights abuses during the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)-imposed White Terror era (1949 to 1987) marks an important step in Taiwan’s search for truth and reconciliation in the democratization process.

When I was a child, I liked to make paper boats and see them float away on the Hsuchuan Canal, which passed in front of our home in Keelung. I would follow it to the mouth of the canal, which opened into the Keelung Harbor. My grandmother often said that the harbor area east of the canal was a dangerous place and warned me to stay away.

I remember how one year, this area — which used to be full of driftwood — was filled in with soil and turned into a parking lot, although a lot of people were unwilling to park their cars there because it was not “clean.”