Taiwan president vows to disclose truth of 1947 massacre

Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen vowed to clarify the truth about and determine responsibility for the mass slaughter of Taiwanese by troops of the Chinese Nationalist Government of Chiang Kai-shek in 1947.

During a ceremony on Wednesday marking the 71th anniversary of what is known as the Feb. 28 Incident, Ing-wen said the government would soon set up a commission to “disclose truth, determine responsibility and provide reparations.’’

In December 2017, the legislature passed a long-awaited law for the promotion of transitional justice.

Nationalist, or Kuomintang (KMT), government troops killed more than 10,000 Taiwanese while suppressing a spontaneous rebellion against the corrupt administration of Chiang’s handpicked governor, Gen. Chen Yi.

The massacre was followed by four decades of authoritarian rule during which thousands more were executed or imprisoned.

In spite of efforts to disclose files and compensate victims in the 1990s “there are still only victims but no perpetrators’’ and “many surviving relatives still do not know how, when or why their loved ones died,” said Hsueh Hua-yuan, Chairman of the Feb. 28th Incident Memorial Foundation.

“In 2017, we discovered more than 1,000 new names of persons executed or arrested and expect to find more in the future,” Hsueh said.

The president said the independent commission will draft a report on rights violations from the time the KMT took over Taiwan on Aug. 15, 1945, through April 30, 1991.

“Through the process of transitional justice, we will become a country that is more free, more democratic and more protective of human rights,” he said.