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Updated Sunday, March 1, 2009 3:51 am TWN, By Trista di Genova, The China Post



	Linda Arrigo inspects a burial site of a political prisoner from the White Terror. More Photos (5)

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Taipei graveyard holds key to White Terror: Arrigo

Barely a stone's throw from Taipei 101 and overlooking one of the more scenic views of the city, a small group of foreigners, one Taiwanese and I clamber up the side of a gentle hill in eastern Taipei with noted human rights activist and scholar Linda Arrigo, to inspect a little-known site that is testament to one of Taiwan's darkest periods.

Hundreds of political prisoners — both native Taiwanese and Mainlander — are buried here, in the “Martial Law Era Political Victim Memorial Park” marked in Chinese only at the gate to the former military village. Many of the graves were not discovered until 1989 or later. According to most estimates so far, 5,000 people were executed, but where they are buried is largely unknown.

“For me this is a tremendous wealth of information, a time capsule especially for this period, when Mainlanders first came,” Arrigo said. “It just calls out for an archeology project, to research and understand who are the people who are buried here in this early period, late 40s and 50s.”

“This is all illegal housing, all kinds of little pockets where Mainlanders came,” she says of the area, mostly fairly nice shacks. “A lot of them were not formally soldiers, some were refugees or left the military early, so they didn't have rights [to the land]. They were able to farm the land, but not allowed to build or sell. The people here are almost all marginalized. But this was the largest area of military dependents,” she said.

“It's kind of hard to interview these people, but you can see them around in the area, picking up things for recycling. That's one topic I give to my students — they try to find out who's doing the recycling, how much they're making, who are the people. There are a lot of people here living in the cracks of Taiwan's rich society.”

Her number one goal, she says, is for her students “to understand history, how their society came to be the way it. Because of the light on the political issues, it's hard to get the students to accept the political issues. Part of the problem is the young people have no grounding in Taiwan history, or Chinese history. They just don't believe that this really happened. They think it's just a political controversy between two interested parties, which it is, but it's not just that. So I hope to show them from this there's a real history, and several sides to it, and they can go out and see it, and research it. Another part of it is for the students to develop a social conscience, because they're medical personnel, and they will have to serve a lot of old farmpeople and Mainlanders living in the corners around here.”

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