A collection of short novels about Taiwan’s White Terror era has been published in Taipei City as the country prepares to mark Feb. 28 Peace Memorial Day.
Stemming from a collaboration between New Taipei City’s National Human Rights Museum and Taipei-based Spring Hill Publishing, the anthology comprises stories written by 30 local authors from 1948 to 2017.
Those featured in the collection include Huang Chun-ming, a prominent figure during Taiwan’s nativist literature movement in the 1970s; Walis Nokan, a prolific award-winning indigenous writer of Atayal heritage; and the late Wu Chou-liu, an influential Hakka journalist and novelist.
According to the publisher, transitional justice can be a painful process characterized by confrontation among ethnicities or political parties as different groups interpret history from their own perspectives.
The new collection seeks to heal these divides by building a better understanding of this unsettling period in Taiwan’s past and the profound legacy it has left on local society, the publisher said.
The White Terror refers to suppression and prosecution of political dissidents during the country’s time under martial law from May 1948 to July 1987 in Taiwan and November 1992 in outlying Kinmen and Matsu islands. The government has since offered official apologies and taken measures to address past injustices.
These include issuing reputation rehabilitation certificates clearing victims of charges, offering compensation to victims or surviving family members and passing legislation to bring the country’s related laws in line with the U.N. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. (SFC-E)
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