Sunday, March 1, 2009

228 Massacre

February 28, 1947 was the catalyst for uprisings against the corrupt Chinese government in Taiwan. Uprisings which were later suppressed brutally and which began decades of martial law and the period known as the "White Terror".

For more on the history, please visit this site.

In the interest of completeness, I looked up a few articles on the events this year:

1. report from India - only "foreign" report I could find, added for perspective's sake.

2. sit-in rally - group of people made the words "do not forget 228" in Liberty Square.

3. Tsai's Criticisms, Lin Criticisms, Civic Truth Group- a couple articles with criticisms of Ma and his actions/lack of action. The civic truth group article is more of a plea to open KMT party files on 228-related cases.

4. Ma's promises - an article reporting Ma's promise to restore funds and probe 228 cases. I only included one because they're all about the same. If #2 is any indication, it looks like a reaction to the criticism on a crucial day. And possibly a reaction to the heckling during his speech. We'll see if he follows through.

5. 2 day conference - commemorating the 62nd anniversary

6. historical bias - accusations of historical bias about the incident, though it seems the guy is pretty biased himself.

#6 is ironic because history is inherently biased. History is basically the telling of a story (His+story?), and every story has a side.. there's really no such thing as un-biased history... You could accuse people of biased reporting of an event. Or untruths in the story or specific accounts... but a "biased history" is really just stating the obvious.