Taiwan's One-Party Past and Law Still Protects the Guilty

Thursday November 08, by Jerome F. Keating Ph.D.

In any normal democracy with respect for law and justice, government files are declassified after a specified period of time so that citizens can find out what really happened. Such laws do not exist in Taiwan in the sense that the public can have access to the real truth of the past. Under current laws from the KMT one-party state, files are allowed to be declassified, but information on third party participants, whether they are betrayers, informants, etc. is either not allowed or is blocked out.

Under a warped sense of privacy of the guilty, guilty parties can protect themselves even if declassification is stipulated. One of many examples of such surfaced recently when Shih Ming-teh, a man who has almost spent more half of his life in jail can still not find out who all has been involved in his arrests, betrayals etc.

Under the current law set up by the KMT, the ones who were responsible for White Terror etc., a person needs to get the permission of the guilty party to find out who all were informants in betraying people and causing them to be arrested, jailed and/or tortured. Similarly those who ordered high profile killings etc. still remain secret. These things will not change until the people vote out the KMT legislators who protect their sordid past under the guise of privacy.