KMT to boycott 2/28 Incident law

They may face a boycott by their Kuomintang colleagues when they begin acting this morning on the bill they have often proposed but failed to get on the agenda.

If passed, the bill requires relatives of the dead persecutors to stand trial for the crimes they know nothing of.

No law in the world compels relatives to be litigated for the crimes committed by the dead.

That’s why the bill, sponsored by Wang Hsing-nan and endorsed by his 33 colleagues, has never gotten a chance to be acted on.

Only for lack of enough members on the Legislative Yuan steering committee, the Kuomintang failed to turn down the bill for the first time last week.

Kuomintang lawmakers who form a majority of two in the 225-member Legislative Yuan may easily boycott or sabotage the DPP bill, officially titled “Draft Law Governing the Compensation for Victims of the February 28 Incident and the White Terror.”

Wang Hsing-nan, who won fame for sending a letter bomb to former Governor of Taiwan Hsieh Tung-min, said relatives of the dead defendants “have a collective duty” to stand trial.

Among the relatives are spouses, children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, and cousins twice removed.

Thousands of people were killed after spontaneous riots on Feb. 27, 1947. The massacre was carried out by government troops sent to Taiwan from China by Chiang Kai-shek’s orders.

The bloody incident spawned the feud between the native islanders and the mainlanders — those ethnic Chinese immigrants after 1945 and their Taiwan-born offspring.

After Chiang Kai-shek moved his Kuomintang government to Taipei at the end of 1949, thousands of communists and communist sympathizers were arrested and tried. Many of them were executed in what has come to be known as the reign of the white terror.

Most of those executed were mainlanders, however.

Lawmaker Wang Tuo, the DPP legislative caucus whip, emphasized the stipulations in the bill that require the defendants to pay compensations.

“Aside from criminal responsibility, the defendants can be sued for compensation,” said the party whip who isn’t running for reelection.

Should the defendants have no financial resources, Wang Tuo said, the Kuomintang should surrender all its “ill-gotten” assets to make the required compensation.

The ruling party is calling a referendum for recovery of such assets, which it estimates at well over NT$20 billion. The referendum will be held alongside the legislative elections scheduled for Jan. 12 next year.

Opposition leaders called the bill a law an emperor in ancient China decreed to kill all the relatives of a rebel or traitor.

Known as the law for “killing off nine related families,” the imperial decree made it mandatory to execute in-laws in addition to all blood relations.

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