THREE OPTIONS: Chiang Kai-shek’s statue will either be relocated, destroyed or stay in the hall as part of a ‘negative heritage site,’ committee member Yang Tsui said
Taipei Times
Date: Jun 02, 2018
By: Chen Yu-fu and Jake Chung / Staff reporter, with staff writer
Dealing with the National Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall tops the Transitional Justice
Visitors take photographs of the Chiang Kai-shek statue at the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in Taipei on Feb. 27, 2015, as staff clean eggs and paint that protesters hurled at the statue. Photo: George Tsorng, Taipei Times
Promotion Committee’s to-do list, committee member Yang Tsui (楊翠) said yesterday.
Removing the hall’s statue of Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) has been prioritized as the first step toward enacting the committee’s mandate stipulated in the Act on Promoting Transitional Justice (促進轉型正義條例) to “remove all symbols of authoritarianism and preserve the sites of injustice,” Yang said in an exclusive interview with the Liberty Times(sister newspaper of the Taipei Times), adding that discussions with the Ministry of Culture regarding the move are under way.
“The committee is mulling three options for the change: relocating the statue, designating the hall as a ‘negative heritage site’ or destroying the statue altogether,” Yang said.
However, destroying the statue would create the risk that younger generations would not recognize Chiang, let alone see him as the authoritarian figure that he is, she added.
The committee is also mulling changes to the physical layout of the hall to portray a different look from the past authoritarian regime, especially in terms of historical memory, Yang said. [FULL STORY]
