Lonely Island: Remember 228

28 February 2010

Remember 228

The moon was fully round, bright and hanging low. All around us, the explosion and cracking of fireworks that momentarily dazzle the skies and fill the air with smoke. People with happy faces wander the streets, while children bounce around with lanterns dangling from their ha nds. The first full moon after the lunar new year marks the end of the season of festivities, and is celebrate with fireworks and eating glutinous rice balls (湯圓) filled with sesame or peanut paste.

This year, this big festival happens to fall on February 28 (228), a momentous day and turning point in Taiwan's modern political history. Next the celebrations and joyous ceremonies at crowded temples, for many, this day is a reminder of Taiwan's dark totalitarian past. For it was on this day in 1947 that the beginnings of the White Terror era began. To those who have lost family and friends, 228 brings back painful memories. To others, it is a day to be free from work, as it is also Peace Memorial Day. Perhaps not without reason.

Walking around the streets of Taiwan, you can feel the prosperity and abundant vibrant life and culture that people enjoy today. Today's Taiwan is a democracy, founded on the rule of law that defends the rights of its many peoples of different origins. Taiwanese, Hakka, Mainland Chinese, Aboriginals and New Immigrants, such as Filipinos, Vietnamese, Indonesians and other South East Asians, live on this tiny piece of land. Despite random acts of fist-fighting in parliament, and the seemingly ominous murders and rampant disasters that the media love to focus on, Taiwan today is a harmonious society.

But it was not always so. 228 in 1947 marked the beginning of a brutal crackdown against influential Taiwanese people by the invading Chiang Kai-Shek regime.

...troops from the mainland arrived ... and indulged in three days
of indiscriminate killing and looting.  For a time everyone seen on the
streets was shot at, homes were broken into and occupants killed.  In the
poorer sections the streets were said to have been littered with dead.
       There were instances of beheadings and mutilation of bodies, and
women were raped, the American said.
       Two foreign women, who were near at Pingtung near Takao, called the
actions of the Chinese soldiers there a "massacre."  They said unarmed
Formosans took over the administration of the town peacefully on March 4
and used the local radio station to caution against violence.
       Chinese were well received and invited to lunch with the Formosan
leaders.  Later a bigger group of soldiers came and launched a sweep through
the streets.
       The people were machine gunned.  Groups were rounded up and
executed.

What began as a peaceful demonstration against the corruption and ineptitude of the Nationalist Chinese government turned into a bloody massacre that in the following decades would cost the lives and tears of tens, if not hundreds of, thousands of Taiwanese. Many were imprisoned for opposing the government (see: Green Island Serenade), and the longest Martial Law in modern history, which lasted almost four decades, was imposed by the Nationalist Chinese regime in order to oppress Taiwanese people and consciousness.

But that is all in the past now, and the Taiwan of today is much different from the Taiwan of yesteryears. Cuts seal themselves, memories fade, but the truth of what happened and the responsibility of those who gave ruled the island and its people with an iron fist cannot be denied, cannot be whitewashed or downplayed (as the Nationalist Chinese Party is attempting to do now that it is back in power...) cannot be forgotten.

On this day, I can only wish for the peace and prosperity that Taiwan has eventually managed to find to forever embrace this country and its people. May old wounds scar and heal, may people's pain and suffering be lightened with time, and may all who live and enjoy the freedoms and rights that they take for granted everyday remember those who had none but gave everything to secure them.