Abstract

Abstract Transitional Justice (TJ) mechanisms have been applied in several post-conflict spaces and commonly hailed by the academy as a – if not the – route to lasting positive peace. Taiwan has seen bouts of at times violent protest, which has given rise to popular and academic claims that renewed TJ efforts are required to achieve true, lasting peace. Against this backdrop, this text identifies sources of grievances and situates Taiwan’s case in the wider TJ literature to then explore Taiwan’s most recent TJ endeavours under Tsai Ying-Wen, focusing on its core mechanism, the Transitional Justice Commission. Engaging other readings of Taiwanese TJ mechanisms, this article argues that Tsai’s TJ mechanisms should be read chiefly as an identity-building project. Located in a wider drive to develop a positive identity for Taiwan, they are an attempt to establish shared historical narratives and ultimately aim to create a more stable Taiwanese identity independent of China as a pivotal Other or benchmark. This process is directed at both domestic and international audiences. This way, Taiwan negotiates, (re-)constructs and reifies a relatively inclusive positive Taiwanese identity not solely through the memories uncovered and remembered through the TJ process, but chiefly through the process itself.

Highlights

  • Taiwan gradually democratised in the 1990s and has generally been a stable and prospering democracy (Fell 44ff)

  • This article argues that mechanisms and institutions introduced by the Tsai government should be read as identity building efforts, rather than as a route to positive peace in Galtung’s taxonomy

  • It does so to negotiate a broad, yet more stable Taiwanese identity which does not rely on China as an Other

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Summary

Introduction

Taiwan gradually democratised in the 1990s and has generally been a stable and prospering democracy (Fell 44ff). The latter in particular has led Taiwanese identity to be defined in negative terms and in contrast with Taiwan’s main negative Other, China (or, respectively, the PRC): Taiwan as a democratic nation, unlike China This might not, as Harrison and Bruter suggest for Western societies, trigger a shift towards right-wing populism, but as I will discuss further below, might heighten the risk of such a populist turn. The KMT administration imposed martial law (ibid.) These events, known as the 228 Incident, are pivotal to the discussion of TJ in Taiwan, and marks the origin of the second source of injustice in Hwang’s framework: In the months that followed, thousands of Taiwanese were summarily executed, disappeared, imprisoned and expropriated by KMT police (Caldwell). Broader conflict research suggests this consequence: Employing Graybill’s framework of post-conflict methods in Africa, Taiwan had unsuccessfully traced a path of “disremembering” or “amnesia.” Contrasted with other spaces where such methods were employed – Graybill (1125f) cites Mozambique, where ritual healing ceremonies reintegrated perpetrators and victims into the community – Taiwan designed no such re-integrative mechanism, nor fully recognised historical oppression (Stolojan 31), be it under Lee, Chen or Ma

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