30-Second Overview: In 1950, a twenty-year-old youth in Qingshui, Taiwan, was arrested because an unknowing visitor mentioned his name. He spent ten years in Green Island Prison. After his release, he founded Taiwan's first children's comic magazine. He lived to be 93 years old, spending the last years of his life asking the same question: "Who exactly killed my friend?" Taiwan's transitional justice revoked guilty verdicts for nearly 6,000 people, yet has still failed to answer his question.
On September 10, 1950, Cai Kun-lin sat in his home in Qingshui, Taichung. An unfamiliar person visited him. This person was later arrested, and Cai's name appeared in their testimony. The Kuomintang (KMT) intelligence agencies, without any trial procedure, imprisoned the twenty-year-old Cai in Green Island.
He stayed there for ten years.
In 2023, 93-year-old Cai Kun-lin passed away. In his later years, when interviewed by the media, he did not speak of his grievance, but rather posed a question: "I want to know, who exactly killed my friend?"1 Many of his cellmates in Green Island did not survive to see the light of day.
Taiwan spent thirty years to formally establish an agency to promote transitional justice, and then spent four years to dissolve that agency. How many answers were found, and how many questions remain hanging in the air, is what this article seeks to梳理 (sort out).
The Structure of Authoritarianism: Who Built It, How It Operated
To understand the difficulties of Taiwan's transitional justice, one must first understand how deep the system that needs to be清算 (settled/accounted for) truly is.
The February 28 Incident occurred in 1947, involving the large-scale suppression of native Taiwanese by off-island troops. The estimated death toll ranges from several thousand to 20,000, a figure that remains controversial to this day.2 Two years later, the Martial Law Era officially began—on May 20, 1949, the Taiwan Provincial Garrison Command announced the martial law order. This state lasted for 38 years, until it was lifted on July 15, 1987. Thirty-eight years is the longest duration of martial law in the 20th century globally.3
The legal basis for Taiwan White Terror was the Regulations for Punishing Rebellion and the Regulations for Suppressing Communist Spies during the Period of Communist Rebellion. Anyone deemed to have suspicions of "rebellion" or being a "communist spy" could be tried by military courts without normal judicial procedures. The "Taiwan Transitional Justice Database," established by the Transitional Justice Commission (TJC), contains records of over 14,000 political case defendants4. Among these, Chiang Kai-shek personally intervened in the adjudication of over 3,000 cases, with 876 cases resulting in death sentences.5
| 14,946 Cases | 876 Cases |
|---|---|
| Political Case Defendant Records (Database) | Confirmed Death Sentences |
The final estimated number of White Terror victims is known to be over 22,000 as of 2022.3 However, the word "known" itself is problematic—before the TJC began organizing archives, even estimating this number was difficult.
The Silent Forty Years: Martial Law Lifting Does Not Equal Accountability
In 1987, when martial law was lifted, Taiwanese society generally cheered. However, lifting martial law only removed the martial law order; it was not the beginning of political accountability.
The Regulations for Punishing Rebellion were not abolished until 1991, and the old Article 100 of the Criminal Code (the "thought crime" clause) was not amended until 1992. Furthermore, the National Security Act passed in 1987 stated: "Final judgments made by military judicial organs during the martial law period shall not be subject to appeal or protest." This effectively locked the results of White Terror trials into a legal safe, meaning victims' rehabilitation would have to wait until the 21st century.
💡 Did You Know?
The first formal government apology in Taiwan after the lifting of martial law did not occur until 1995, when Lee Teng-hui apologized to the families of the February 28 Incident victims on behalf of the government, and the February 28 Incident Handling and Compensation Act was passed, establishing the February 28 Incident Memorial Foundation. Legislation for White Terror compensation followed a few years later, but compensation is one thing, holding people accountable is another—Taiwan only did the former.
The silence after the lifting of martial law had structural causes. Wu Nai-te, a researcher at the Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica, proposed three explanations in his paper: Taiwan's democratic transition was led by the KMT (the "Quiet Revolution" model), and the ruling party retained political legitimacy after democratization; the economic achievements of the late authoritarian period led many to view Chiang Ching-kuo as a merit-maker rather than a criminal; and given the long passage of time since the political oppression, perpetrators had either died or grown old.6
After the first party alternation in power in 2000, "transitional justice" began to become public vocabulary. However, during Chen Shui-bian's eight years in office, substantive progress remained quite limited, staying mostly at the symbolic level—single-point actions like changing street names and removing statues, without a systematic legal framework.
The TJC Act and the TJC: An Agency Thirty Years Late
In 2016, when the DPP simultaneously won the executive and legislative branches, the legislation of the Transitional Justice Act truly advanced. Even so, the process was not smooth: the KMT strongly obstructed it in the Legislative Yuan, even filing for constitutional interpretation. The Act was finally passed in its third reading on December 5, 2017, defining the "authoritarian rule period" as August 15, 1945, to November 6, 1992.
On May 31, 2018, the Transitional Justice Commission (TJC) was officially established. It was the first unit in Taiwan's history to promote transitional justice under the name of a state agency, subordinate to the Executive Yuan. Its statutory duration was two years, later extended twice, and it was finally dissolved on May 31, 2022, surviving for a total of 1,460 days.7
The TJC faced a crisis from its inception. In September 2018, Deputy Chairperson Chang Tien-chin was exposed via audio recordings for attacking opposition figures in an internal meeting. The TJC was mocked by the public as the "Eastern Factory" (a reference to the secret police of the Qing dynasty), and both the Chairperson and Deputy Chairperson resigned. This opening left the TJC struggling to establish credibility throughout its term.8
⚠️ Controversial Viewpoint
The TJC's political position was always caught between two fires: to the Blue Camp (KMT), it was a "tool for political reckoning"; to some pro-independence factions and victims' families, its efforts were insufficient and it avoided holding perpetrators accountable. Era Power spokesperson Li Chao-li stated to the BBC, "Many elites who were attached to the one-party system in the past authoritarian era could still make a comeback during the democratic transition."9
Four Years of the TJC: What Was Done, What Was Not
- 2018/05/31 — TJC officially established, first Chairperson Huang Huang-hsiung took office.
- 2018/10/04 — First wave of guilty verdict revocation list published, 1,270 people.
- 2020/02/26 — Taiwan Transitional Justice Database launched, Chiang Kai-shek's intervention in judgments data made public for the first time.
- 2021/03/30 — First batch of 25 sites of injustice officially reviewed and announced.
- 2021/03/27 — Fifth to seventh waves of revocation announcements, cumulative total 5,942 cases.
- 2022/02/22 — Second batch of 17 White Terror sites of injustice announced.
- 2022/05/31 — TJC officially disbanded, tasks transferred to various ministries.
Restoring Judicial Injustice: The Most Concrete Achievement
During its four-year term, the TJC revoked a total of 5,983 guilty verdicts3, including the well-known Formosa Incident case, Lukue Incident, 520 Farmers' Movement case, and Taiyuan Incident. This is the most clearly advanced part of the TJC's mission, because the legal basis for administrative agencies to revoke judicial judgments was established, and each wave of revocation had public ceremonies and lists.
However, "revoking guilty verdicts" and "finding out who made them sit in prison" are two different things. Taiwan achieved the former, but the latter was almost entirely absent.
Political Archives: Open and Still Closed
The TJC reviewed 6,306 cases of political archives held by state agencies, and simultaneously reviewed 7,572 items of political archives within the KMT's party assets.3 This included "General Manager's Annotations"—documents personally annotated by Chiang Kai-shek, where one can see his handwriting changing fixed-term imprisonment sentences to death sentences.
However, this process itself was full of resistance. The KMT once claimed "there were no other archives to report," but the TJC ultimately discovered that the party still held a large amount of untransferred "Taiwan Provincial Party Committee" archives, including precious materials involving the February 28 Incident, personnel调动 (transfer) of party and government organs, and the reception of party assets.
Authoritarian Symbols: The Difficulties Behind the Numbers
The TJC investigated authoritarian symbols across Taiwan (mainly statues of the two Chiangs and named spaces), ultimately totaling 1,546 items/places. By the time of its dissolution, the proportion of central administrative agencies that had removed or disposed of them was 27.05%, and local counties/cities were 26.74%. Including those "agreed for disposal," the total for the whole island was approximately 33.2%.3
In other words, more than two-thirds of Chiang Kai-shek or Chiang Ching-kuo statues remained in place as of 2022.
The most prominent site, the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, saw the TJC host multiple workshops, change some exhibition spaces, and propose a recommended plan before dissolution, advocating for its transformation into a "Democratic Historical Memory Hall" paired with a "Reflection on Authoritarian History Park".7 However, whether the statue is removed remains an open case, now handled by the Ministry of Culture.
📝 Curator's Note
A detail that illustrates the complexity of the issue: The Chiang Kai-shek statues removed from all over the country were many concentrated in Daci, Cihu, Taoyuan. That place has now become a "Monument Sculpture Park," a popular tourist attraction. The gray area between removal and preservation is fully exposed in this park.
Sites of Injustice: Turning Past Wounds into Public Spaces
The TJC announced a total of 42 Sites of Injustice in two batches3, including the New Taipei City Jingmei (White Terror Jingmei Memorial Park), Taitung Green Island (White Terror Green Island Memorial Park), and the Taipei Ankang Reception House. The Ankang Reception House is particularly precious because it has been preserved in its original form to this day—it was the site of political interrogation during the authoritarian era, and walking in still allows one to feel the oppressive spatial design of that time.
The National Human Rights Museum, subordinate to the Ministry of Culture, continues to maintain exhibitions at the Jingmei and Green Island parks, and has built the "National Human Rights Memory Database" and "Sites of Injustice Database" for public query.
The Unresolved Question: Where Are the Perpetrators?
When the TJC dissolved, it left behind a task summary report of 1.77 million words. It recorded the stories of many victims and the operational methods of the authoritarian system. But one thing remained blank at the end of the four-year term: individual accountability of perpetrators.
This is not a unique difficulty for Taiwan, but Taiwan's situation has its特殊性 (specific characteristics).
After German reunification, East Germany established the Stasi Records Agency (Stasi Records Agency), similar to the Gestapo. German citizens could access records of their own surveillance, and information on over 170,000 citizens who had served as informants became public data.10 The TJC had exchanged experiences with the Stasi Records Agency, but Taiwan never passed a similar "Lustration Law"—a mechanism for systematic review of former authoritarian accomplices in public office.
South Korea's experience is closer to "accountability to the end": The suppressors of the 1980 Gwangju Uprising, including former Presidents Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo, were prosecuted in 1995 after democratization, and sentenced to death (later commuted) and life imprisonment respectively in 1997.11 Chiang Kai-shek, the mastermind of Taiwan's political oppression, died in 1975, making legal accountability impossible; but others in his system—military judges, intelligence officers, informants—have to this day been almost never publicly named.
✦ "Not holding accountable the accomplices of the past regime is a great reconciliation with criminals; in the end, the murderer remains among us." — German writer Ralph Giordano (1923-2014), quoted from Taiwan Yong Society series commentary12
This sentence appears in literature cited by Taiwan's transitional justice legal researchers. Ironically, Taiwan's transitional justice indeed moved in this direction.
To What Extent Is Transitional Justice Considered Complete?
This is a question continuously debated in Taiwanese society, and the reasons for dissatisfaction from each camp are exactly opposite.
Voices believing it is "Enough, Even Excessive": Represented by the KMT, believing the TJC is a political tool of the DPP, and that the achievements of the authoritarian era (such as the "Taiwan Economic Miracle") should not be written off. Chiang Kai-shek is still considered by many polls to be the "President who contributed most to Taiwan".13
Voices believing it is "Far From Enough": Civil human rights groups, descendants of victims, and some scholars point out that Taiwan's transitional justice has always had "only victims, no perpetrators." Lustration laws were never passed, party asset handling is opaque, spaces related to Chiang Kai-shek still exist in large numbers, and the narrative of authoritarian history in the education system remains controversial to this day.10
A Third Voice—Believing the Framework Itself Is Problematic: Some scholars (such as Professor Cheng Chih-yung of the Department of Political Science, National Taiwan University) point out that Taiwan's transitional justice has become overly politicized, becoming an extension of the pro-independence and pro-unification battlefields, dragging measures that could have凝聚 (coalesced) consensus into identity politics.
The United Nations' Guidelines on Transitional Justice, released in 2010, divides work into five dimensions: prosecuting perpetrators, realizing the right to know the truth, restoring victims' rights, institutional reform, and national participation in dialogue.10 Taiwan has done relatively well in "victim compensation," and has a database to check for "knowing the truth," but in "prosecuting perpetrators" and "institutional reform" (especially education), there is still a large amount of work unfinished.
⚠️ Controversial Viewpoint
After the TJC dissolved, transitional justice work was taken over by the Executive Yuan's "Transitional Justice Conference" and various ministries. Critics worry that the decentralized transfer method will cause highly politically sensitive work to lose momentum—especially handing over "perpetrator identification and accountability" to the Ministry of Justice, which is not independent of political pressure. Ye Hsing-ling, the TJC's last acting chairperson, said in 2022: "Leave the score for others to grade."14
The **Sunflower Student Movement** and the Generational Connection of Transitional Justice
An interesting time point is worth noting: The legislative advancement of Taiwan's transitional justice occurred exactly within the political landscape after the 2014 Sunflower Student Movement. The Sunflower Movement changed Taiwan's political map, making the DPP's full governance in 2016 possible, and the Transitional Justice Act was passed only after that full governance.
The core issue of the Sunflower Movement was sovereignty and democracy, but it was also a generation's reaction to the authoritarian legacy—resistance to a political system dominated by a party transformed from the old party-state machine. In a sense, transitional justice is the institutional outlet for this generation's sense of historical debt.7
But the story of Zheng Nan-yong reminds us that this path is longer than anyone expected. In 1989, Zheng Nan-yong resisted the KMT's arrest warrant by self-immolation, becoming a martyr for Taiwan's freedom of speech. Thirty years after his death, Taiwan established the formal agency to promote transitional justice. Thirty-four years after his death, the agency had already dissolved, and the justice he expected had not yet been completed.
Curator's Note: An Engineering Project Without an Endpoint
📝 Curator's Note
Transitional justice has a standard definition in academia, but in Taiwan, it has always been a term occupied by living politics. Before every election, it turns from a historical task into a campaign weapon, exhausting those who are truly willing to delve into it.The question Cai Kun-lin asked at 93—"Who exactly killed my friend?"—is not a question that can be answered by statistics. It requires a society willing to be clear: In that era, who did what, and for what reason.
The true difficulty of Taiwan's transitional justice is not the lack of data, but the lack of consensus in society on "what to do after making it clear." Most people agree to rehabilitate victims; when it comes to holding perpetrators accountable, the consensus cracks.
This crack may be harder to handle than the statues themselves.
Further Reading:
- National Human Rights Museum — The museum built by the state itself to commemorate political victims, unveiled in 2018, budget frozen in 2025
- Taiwan White Terror — The historical entity targeted by the revocation of verdicts
- Martial Law Era — The legal container from 1949-1987
- February 28 Incident — The suppression in post-war Taiwan in 1947, another line of transitional justice work
References
- Openbook Reading Magazine: A Political Prisoner's Dream of 'Prince' — Interview with Cai Kun-lin (2023) — See original link content for supplementary data↩
- Taiwan Truth and Reconciliation Commission: Introduction to White Terror — See original link content for supplementary data↩
- Transitional Justice Commission Official Website — See original link content for supplementary data↩
- Taiwan Transitional Justice Database — See original link content for supplementary data↩
- Liberty Times: Transitional Justice Database Launched, Chiang Kai-shek Intervened in 3,000 Judgments (2020) — Liberty Times Report↩
- Wu Nai-te: Transitional Justice and Historical Memory: The Unfinished Business of Taiwan's Democratization — Academia Sinica↩
- Plain Law: After the TJC Dissolves, What Is the Next Step for Transitional Justice? (2024) — Plain Law Movement↩
- The News Lens: Transitional Justice Work Racing Against Time (2022) — See original link content for supplementary data↩
- BBC Chinese: Taiwan Continues to Debate Unhappy 'Transitional Justice' Regardless of Unification or Independence (2019) — BBC News Chinese Report↩
- Chang-Liao & Chen, "Transitional Justice in Taiwan: Changes and Challenges", Washington International Law Journal (2020) — See original link content for supplementary data↩
- Taipei Times: Seoul does transitional justice right (2023) — See original link content for supplementary data↩
- The Reporter: Lin Chia-ho / How to Handle 'Perpetrators' in Transitional Justice? — See original link content for supplementary data↩
- The KMT's criticism of the TJC as a political tool is a public stance within the party. For Chiang Kai-shek's historical presidential evaluation polls, see TVBS Poll Center's various releases.↩
- Ye Hsing-ling's statement "Leave the score for others to grade" during media interviews is seen in multiple media reports (Central News Agency, Liberty Times, etc.) on the eve of the TJC's dissolution in 2022.↩