The Real Transitional Justice We Need

“Do not come to claim my body. I wish give it to the National Taiwan University College of Medicine or medical training institute. When I was a student, I learnt a lot of medical knowledge from practical autopsy. If this body can be autopsied by students, to increase their medical knowledge, to contribute to their medical knowledge, it would be much more meaningful.”

This except comes from my grandfather’s last letters, which were written to my grandmother before his execution in 1953. Unfortunately his dying wish was not realized. These five letters were not given to his family, but were filed with other documents and eventually sent into the National Archives Administration. In 2008, once access to these documents became possible, I began to apply for any papers related to my grandfather and we saw copies of these letters for the first time. However, by this time my grandmother was suffering with Alzheimer's, which prevented her from learning that her husband had written letters to her 56 years previously. 

Below I set out three appeals to the government, which I ask as a family member of a political prisoner.

Firstly: The government should survey and return any previously unreturned personal items automatically. This should not be left as the responsibility of relatives to make a claim, but should be the government’s responsibility to ensure they are returned. There may be many personal letters and personal items that are still kept by the government, which the victim’s families know nothing about. The Government should make a systemic survey of any remaining items and return them as a matter of course.

Secondly: Files from every administration should be better organised. A law about file transfer, after each administration is dissolved, should be established. The present situation is that all files and documents from every administration are filed in various locations and not sorted in one place. Information held about the people involved in the arrests and trials of the political prisoners should be published. It maybe that under current law we are unable to prosecute the original military judges and secret police, but we should have the right to know who did this. We want to know which cases were judged, and by whom, which cases were investigated, and by whom. The government should publish these data and exhibit them in a museum.  

Thirdly: There should be a real effort to admit the fault and make a proper apology. We do not need a meaningless apology issued by a president or other unrelated individual. This is an unusual situation, we only have victims but no perpetrator. I believe that some of the people involved are still alive. I wish to hear someone publicly apologize for what he did; which case he judged or person he tortured, and state clearly that this was wrong. My grandfather was a dentist who had studied in Japan, he was arrested a few years after he had returned to Taiwan and opened his clinic. The charge made by the Chinese Nationalist Party was rebellion and he was first sentenced to 15 years imprisonment. When the document was sent to Chiang Kai-shek, he changed the sentence to death. This decision to amend the sentence took my grandfather’s life. He was 33 years old. We believe that excepting Chiang Kai-shek, there must be other participants still alive. However, has anyone come to publicly apologize? Until now, nobody!