Reuters AlertNet Lite - Bill holds Taiwan govt liable for 1947 massacre

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Bill holds Taiwan govt liable for 1947 massacre

02 Mar 2007 10:28:40 GMT
Source: Reuters

TAIPEI, March 2 (Reuters) - A bill that would officially blame the Taiwan government for a bloody crackdown by Chinese troops on a dissident movement 60 years ago and give victims more time to seek compensation reached parliament on Friday.

All but a few legislators informally signed cabinet-recommended revisions to the Feb. 28 Incident Compensation Law to state that the Nationalist-led Chinese government was behind the killings of as many as 20,000 people. Friday's signing clears it for formal approval as early as next week.

"Our country needs to have justice and fairness," said Lin Chen-feng, planning chief of the government's Memorial Foundation of 228. "Not to have it so far is very strange. Taiwan's transition hasn't been finished yet."

Feb. 28 (2/28) was the day in 1947 when a Taipei street dispute over the state cigarette monopoly flared into a chain of protests against Kuomintang (Nationalist Party) rule from China. Most of the deaths came from protest crackdowns after Feb. 28.

The bill, drafted in late 2006, would also allow survivors or relatives of victims of the incident to apply for compensation beyond a previously agreed cutoff of 2011. The government believes the 2,264 compensation cases approved to date, costing T$7.1 billion ($216 million), account for almost everyone.

The government also intends to give the foundation at least T$1.5 billion over five years for research and education work.

Taiwan's ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) blames the bloodshed on the late Chiang Kai-shek, Chinese president in 1947 who later lost power on the mainland but ruled the island for another 25 years, and his Kuomintang (KMT) party.

KMT legislators, still a major political force in Taiwan, backed the bill on Friday as they considered the changes "minimal", said Nationalist lawmaker Joanna Lei. But she said the party would oppose a similar bill, drafted recently by the DPP, that would allow the Nationalists to be indicted.

"They call us the killers," Lei said. "But the current legislators weren't even born then." (US$1=T$32.9)

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Last updated:Fri Mar 2 10:29:53 2007