Culture Minister Lung Ying-tai said on Tuesday that the purpose of establishing the National Human Rights Museum is to face the tragic history of Taiwan's "White Terror” era with utmost sincerity and humility.
Moreover, the Minister stressed that the most urgent task is to preserve the existing historical sites on Green Island, an outlying island off Taitung in eastern Taiwan, rather than building large-scale museum buildings.
Minister Lung made the remarks during a one-day visit to the small island. A massive human rights memorial event is scheduled to be held there in mid-May.
Lung has instructed related departments to recruit more student volunteers and to cooperate with local universities' history and humanities departments in conducting more in-depth research on the victims of the "White Terror” era.
Lung has also instructed the Ministry staff to investigate the stories behind each victim whose name has been engraved on a cenotaph at the National Human rights Museum. She stressed that the oral history of the victims should be included in the Ministry's National Memory Storage Project as soon as possible because most of the survivors are getting old.
"White Terror” was a period during Taiwan's martial rule between 1949 and 1987, in which the central government suppressed freedom and persecuted many people it considered a threat to its rule and national stability. Thousands of people were arrested and imprisoned during that period, including political dissidents and innocent citizens; many died or disappeared.
The "White Terror” era began with the so-called 228 Incident, an anti-government uprising on February 28, 1947. It was violently suppressed by the central government, leading to a large number of civilian deaths. The estimated number of casualties varies from 10,000 to more than 30,000.