Taipei Times
Date: Dec 27, 2016
By: Stacy Hsu / Staff reporter

A cosplay event at a school in Hsinchu City has sparked debate about Taiwan’s past, with politicians saying that the Republic of China (ROC) national flag and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government’s praise of the Japanese colonial era are manifestations of the “Nazi spirit.”

The legislature’s Foreign and National Defense Committee yesterday convened a meeting to examine Sao Tome and Principe’s decision to cut its 19-year diplomatic ties with Taipei, but it was briefly overshadowed by the widely criticized campus event featuring a group of Hsinchu Kuang Fu High School students dressed as Nazis on Saturday.

Controversy about the school event has snowballed with Representative to Germany Shieh Jhy-wey (謝志偉) attributing the students’ actions to ignorance about history.

“If the education system had fully incorporated history about the state violence that occurred in Taiwan, young students would naturally be critical of Germany’s Nazi regime,” Shieh said on Facebook on Saturday. “Instead, certain political parties still boycott the revelation of historical truth and continue treating the [ROC] national flag as a special symbol.”    [FULL  STORY]