Taiwan marks crackdown anniversary amid China tensions

Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen today said the island's democracy is mature enough to handle a thorough investigation into a bloody crackdown on anti-government protesters 70 years ago, an event seen as a rallying point by those who reject China's claim to the self-governing island.
Tsai, speaking at a gathering in Taipei, pledged to take a "rigorous and precise attitude" in the assigning of responsibility for the violent suppression of the protests that began on February 28, 1947.
The largely peaceful opposition movement was directed at the corrupt rule of Chiang Kai-shek's Chinese Nationalist Party that had taken control of the former Japanese colony less than two years earlier.

Tsai had said during her inauguration last May that she expected within three years to see a full report on the suppression of the protests.
China considers the uprising a part of the overall struggle that led to the Communist victory in 1949, while many Taiwanese see it as a backlash against attempts to govern the island from China without the consent of the island's native population.
"After 70 years, I believe that Taiwanese society now has the mature democratic mechanisms to discuss this matter," Tsai told a gathering of victims, families and supporters in 228 Peace Memorial Park in central Taipei, named after the date of the uprising.

As many as 28,000 people were believed killed after Chiang dispatched troops to massacre participants in the largely peaceful protests, many of whom came from the Japanese-educated elite. Many more were imprisoned and killed in the decades of political persecution that followed, in what was widely known as the "White Terror."

Suppressed under Nationalist rule, the uprising has become a rallying point for Taiwanese who say the island and China are separate nations. Opponents, including those in China, say the anniversary is being used for political purposes to further an anti-Beijing, pro-Taiwan independence agenda.
Even after seven decades, the events remain contentious. While hundreds of Tsai's supporters rallied in the park, police kept out a separate group calling on the government to drop the issue.

This year's commemorations are especially significant because the government is drafting a law that could rename a central Taipei tourist landmark dedicated to Chiang and remove his statue from the premises. Seeking to avoid confrontations, authorities on Tuesday closed the landmark Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall that is popular with tourists from China, where the one-reviled Chiang is now seen as a patriot who battled Japanese invaders.
Tsai's independence-leaning administration is also releasing all previously secret government documents about the events that broke out when Nationalist policemen attacked a widow selling contraband cigarettes, sparking an outpouring of pent-up frustration with Chiang's government.