Seventy-four years have elapsed since that fateful day which marks the death of not just thousands of lives, but also the post-war hope of an ideal society once held by many Taiwanese.
The local Taiwanese of the late 1940s — those who spent almost the entirety of their lives conforming to Japanese education and culture — found themselves increasingly foreign to the newly-arrived mainlanders. Accompanied by the Kuomintang Party’s failed economic management, arbitrary property seizure, and exclusion from political participation, this divergence of identity between the locals (本省人) and the mainlanders (or, in Mandarin “the outsiders” 外省人) eventually led to a flashpoint on the night of the 27th of February, when an agent of the State Monopoly Bureau struck a widow suspected of selling contraband cigarettes. Another officer shot and killed a bystander in the angry crowd surrounding the scene. The situation was exacerbated the next day when soldiers fired upon the demonstrators near the Governor General’s Office protesting the officer’s misconduct. Governor Chen-Yi immediately declared martial law over the entire island and called upon the Nationalist Revolutionary Army to violently suppress any locally-organized revolts, leading to the notorious White Terror that would persist for the next 38 years and claim the lives of the innocent and so-called political dissidents.
Fast forward into contemporary Taiwan, where we enjoy the bliss of freedom and human rights protected by not only the rules of law but also a common commitment to pursuing the goals of a freer and more prosperous Taiwan, we tempt to forget the harsh circumstances faced by those before us. What else can the White Terror teach us today amidst the numerous memorials built? What else can the 228 Memorial Day remind us of despite serving as a day for cross-country travel and hotel discounts?
The fragility of democracy.
Indeed, democracy is fragile — though we see protestors freely roaming the streets and public offices and the media faced by virtually no government jurisdiction relevant to the expression of different political stances — democracy is still prone to perils especially when lacking appropriate governance and public emphasis.
228 also serves as a reminder of those with the latent intentions that are the antithesis of democracy tend to ironically employ the name of democracy to promote their agendas. Adolf Hitler, after launching an ill-fated Brownshirt revolution, resorted to lawful politics and eventually acquired chancellorship by promising the people restoration of their so-called “Germanic rights”, that is, to oppress the other non-Germanic races. This was the case for Nazi Germany and Communist Russia, and would inevitably befall Taiwan if we fail to protect these fundamental values we ought to treasure. It would thus be our obligation to take the necessary political caution and take actions to stand for causes that promote and protect democracy, regardless of how minimal they are, first and foremost by honoring the true meaning of 228.
