Taiwan marked the sixty-first anniversary of the February 28 Incident of 1947 on Thursday.With the presidential election only a little more than three weeks away, the ruling Democratic Progressive Party staged a number of events to commemorate the occasion to rally support for its standard bearer Frank Hsieh.President Chen Shui-bian dedicated a new February 28 Memorial Hall and urged the people not to forget the massacre of tens of thousands of innocent people by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek’s government troops, that followed the spontaneous riots on that day 61 years ago.The 2/28 incident spawned a feud between native-born islanders and mainlanders, those migrants from China after 1945 and their offspring born on Taiwan.
We are glad to note the rallies the ruling party held this year were much less supported than the nationwide “Hand-in-Hand to Defend Taiwan” campaign it pushed on the same day in 2004 to help President Chen win reelection.Less support means more people do not want the remembrance of the bloody incident to be abused by politicians trying to take advantage of the feud to get elected.
The incident is a timeless tragedy.No one in Taiwan should forget it.But everyone has to condone it just as indigenous peoples of the island have long forgiven what Chinese emigrants did to their forebears in the three centuries before Taiwan was ceded to Japan in 1895.Hundreds of thousands of tribesmen were slaughtered by the new Chinese settlers who grabbed their land and Sinicized Taiwan.The people whose ancestors had settled on Taiwan hundreds of years before the first Chinese came to the island have never observed anniversaries of the countless massacres to continue nursing the hatred for their new masters.
Hsieh has proposed a general pardon for all the “culprits” in the incident, which does not make sense, for practically none of them are still alive.He also called for release of all government documents on the tragedy to facilitate historical research.We believe all the papers have been declassified.As a matter of fact, a group of historians pored over them to identify Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek as the “chief culprit.”That gave President Chen an excuse to rename the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall last year.
The ethnic Chinese majority of Taiwan have many things to remember the incident by.There are many 2/28 memorial halls, museums and parks.Above all, President Lee Teng-hui apologized on behalf of the Kuomintang government and proclaimed February 28 a national holiday in 1998 to disarm the feud.There should be no more rallies to mark the anniversary in order just to boost the odds of unscrupulous politicians to get elected in the years to come.
（本文刊載於97.03.03 China Post第4版，本文代表作者個人意見）
