Nations confront authoritarian histories

Posters of Andrzej Wajda's latest film "Katyn," which addresses the 1940 massacre of the Poles, cover a post in Cracow, Poland 2007. (Photo by June Tsai)

By June Tsai

The latest film by renowned Polish director Andrzej Wajda premiered in Poland's movie theaters in September. "Katyn" tells the story of how the Soviet army imprisoned and systematically executed thousands of Polish officers and intellectuals in 1940, following its invasion of Poland during World War II. Wajda's father was one of the estimated 20,000 victims. But in the name of Polish-Soviet friendship, the Katyn massacre was a forbidden topic during the communist era in Poland. The Soviet Union had long blamed the crime on Nazi Germany, but in 1989, Mikhail Gorbachev admitted the truth. To this whole past--the event and the lie about the event--Wajda dedicated his cinematic work of art.

While the director hoped that his art would soothe the nation's re-examination process, in reality, dealing with the truth about traumatic events in the past remains as painful as ever for dozens of the world's societies emerging from undemocratic systems. This is true for Poland and Taiwan, though each country has its own paths and historical contexts.

History textbooks might distort the truth about the past and omit facts out of concern for political legitimacy, but many Polish families still have living memories of the event. Recently, Russia denied Poland access to historical files concerning the killings, an obstruction that only makes investigating and keeping records of the massacre a more difficult job for the Polish Institute of National Remembrance.

According to the Warsaw-based institute, the organization was created to "preserve the memory of losses suffered by the Polish nation as a result of World War II and the post-war period." The institute is responsible for documentation that includes files created in the communist era by Polish security agencies, records pertaining to crimes committed during the communist and Nazi occupations, political oppression carried out by officials of former Polish investigative and justice organs, as well as files on the activities of the communist-era security services.

Andrzej Arseniuk, spokesperson for the institute, explained that after the fall of communism in 1989, all documents kept by the communist secret security agency began being transferred to the civil services of the new state of Poland. During the 1990s, dealing with the past was pushed to one side, he said Sept. 20, due partly to the negotiated transition in Poland, which gave former state party officials further opportunities to exercise influence over issues that involved not only them, but virtually everybody in society.

In comparison to neighboring former East Germany and the Czech Republic, creating such an organization to deal with the past suffered from delay in Poland. A special act for its establishment did not come into existence until 1998, after having been vetoed by then Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski, the public face of Poland's left-wing alliance. The institute began operating in 2000, with the bulk of its work force consisting of archivists, historians and prosecutors.

"Our main job is to retrieve archives and process them. This is not easy, as files from the former secret security agencies stretch almost 60 kilometers in length," Arseniuk said. The institute is responsible for gathering, assessing, preserving and disseminating the documentation, as well as giving access to people who are permitted to see them. An important task, shouldered by its public education office, is to conduct history education, publish books and research findings, organize seminars and prepare brochures for the country's history teachers. According to Arseniuk, history education is a long-term function of the institute.

The Institute of National Remembrance became the center of public focus after the agency was made responsible in 2006 for "vetting," a process that screens citizens to check if they collaborated with communist-era security services. A vetting office was set up within the institute in 2007. Around 50 prosecutors are charged with verifying and checking truthfulness of declarations submitted by people defined by the law as to their involvement or non-involvement in the secret security services, according to Arseniuk.

A lustration law has existed in Poland since 1998, which disqualifies those associated with human-rights abuses between 1939 and 1989 from taking up public posts of influence. Around 27,000 declarations from public figures were submitted. In March 2007, amendments to the existing vetting rules came into force, in which groups of people required to submit declarations of whether they had collaborated with communist secret services were expanded to include journalists, lawyers and academics, in addition to election candidates and nominees for public posts. The act was estimated to increase by over tenfold the number of people obliged to make declarations. The new vetting rules were designed by the Law and Justice party, which led the coalition government between October 2005 and October 2007.

Under the amendments, those holding or seeking to hold public posts must file vetting declarations before a specific date or face job loss. Controversies as well as boycotts soon ensued concerning the mandatory declaration and, more importantly, the expansion of its range of application. Critics said it deprived tens of thousands of citizens of their political rights. The bulk of amendments made to the vetting law were ruled unconstitutional by the Polish Constitutional Tribunal in May 2007 and vetting was suspended accordingly. How to proceed with vetting and how the institute's files should be disclosed will depend on the new parliament to be formed according to results of the Oct. 21 election, Arseniuk said.

Cheng Chin-mo, an assistant professor at the Graduate Institute of European Studies at Taiwan's Tamkang University, believes the lustration process implemented in a country dealing with a legacy of human-rights abuses under a previous authoritarian regime produces divisive and polarized perceptions within that society.

Polish political elites, particularly Lech and Jaroslaw Kaczynski of the Law and Justice party, pursued vetting effectively, having designed the new rules. Cheng pointed out that they deemed it necessary to cut relations with former ruling elites derived from the communist system lest they continue to influence the new country with old thinking and form a network to preserve entrenched privileges. However, though lustration was intended for the good of the country, it eventuated that the practice was easily misused, Cheng said.

The leaking of secret police files to the media before they were properly evaluated may end up as tools used to compromise political opponents, according to sociologist Edmund Wnuk-Lipinski of the Collegium Civitas, an independent university based in Warsaw. This was one of the reasons why he disapproved of the Institute of National Remembrance keeping these files. For him, there is no defense, legal or otherwise, against the leaking of these solitary determinants as to who is a secret collaborator and who is not.

The best way to solve the vetting issue is to open the files to everyone and whoever is interested, Wnuk-Lipinski argued, "so that those who are controlling the files will not have the privilege to use that information for political reasons." While criticizing people in the institute for treating the files as they are in possession of absolute truth, he pointed out that in this way, "you see the world through the eyes of the secret police of the communist regime."

However, the sociologist said the institute is important in view of its functions in collecting, preserving and making available the files as a reference for social scientific research. These sources of information must be confirmed by others in order to determine their truthfulness and credibility, he said.

"The past must be discovered, but it must be done in a civilized way," Wnuk-Lipinski added. "The outcome in some cases of collaborating was the death of innocent people. Those collaborators should be put on trial and somehow punished," he said. Otherwise there will be more of them in the future, he stressed.

"But this should be done according to legal procedures." Wnuk-Lipinski stressed that the accused's right to defend himself should be protected and be on equal status with the prosecution's powers. Moreover, "these procedures should be conducted on an individual level. There should be no collective responsibility."

The communist system in Poland enabled everyone to be implicated, and many could do nothing else but cooperate, Cheng said. Yet it is still necessary to face the consequences of this system and probe into the past. History must be studied, but not for using the discoveries to seek revenge, he stressed.

Referring to the situation in Taiwan, Cheng said one of the criticisms leveled at Taiwan's ruling Democratic Progressive Party and its politicians is their inability to account for and cast off the nation's authoritarian past. Issues concerning the old regime, such as Kuomintang assets and the murder of navy captain Yin Ching-feng in 1993, were paid lip service, and usually only around election time, Cheng said. The Yin murder case was alleged to have involved huge bribes to officials in related countries concerning the KMT administration's purchase of six Lafayette-class frigates from the French company Thomson-CSF. Moreover, the DPP proposed five bills concerning correcting past injustices in February 2007, including a bill on truth and reconciliation, but none of which have yet become legislation.

Cheng commented that the Kaczynski brothers, both having roots in Poland's anti-communist Solidarity movement started in the early 1980s, have been consistent in their efforts to deal with the past, although their means of pursuing justice and viewing the state machine as tools that can be controlled were quite problematic and evident of the influence of past authoritarian rule. Compared with the situation in Taiwan, he said local politicians have been at best talking about justice in the transitional democracy while the opposition sabotaged any efforts. Both groups only focus on winning elections. "We do not even have such an organization as the Institute of National Remembrance, let alone a lustration law," Cheng added.

Taiwanese scholars on democratic transition believe that the view on who is responsible for human-rights abuses under the KMT rule in light of ethnicity, a collective conception, is the result of losses suffered not being sufficiently addressed, nor the truth uncovered. Until this is done there will be no reconciliation in society.
Yet political leaders vowing to right the wrongs of an undemocratic past need to have a vision of the effects that endeavors to redeem justice will have on the formation of values and the future of a great country, according to Cheng. "It's a problem of what value you prize, a problem of what kind of country you want."

Note: This article appears in Taiwan Journal Nov. 2, 2007. I wrote this after a visit to Poland in the fall of 2007. Post it here to commemorate those who died in the Katyn fog and forest then and now.

Poland wrestles with communist past

Students walk in front of the University of Warsaw in October 2007. The younger generation is at the crossroads of change. (Courtesy of Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Poland)

By June Tsai

Iga Harasimowicz, an international-relations major from Czestochowa, expressed optimism with development in Poland. She said she would vote for Law and Justice, the largest right-wing parliamentary party in Poland led by Lech and Jaroslaw Kaczynski. "Though I don't agree with everything they say or do," she added while brewing coffee at a quaint little coffee shop in historic Cracow, Poland's old capital.

But back in Warsaw, strong reservations exist regarding Law and Justice's government record. "Law and Justice believes the state should be as strong as possible," said Edmund Wnuk-Lipinski, president of Collegium Civitas and a sociology professor. He indicated that the moderate-right Civic Platform--Poland's major opposition party--heading up a coalition would be a better alternative for the Polish people looking toward the future. For him, supporters of Law and Justice are those who failed to find strategies to succeed in the new world of democracy. According to him, Law and Justice has successfully incorporated factions of people who prefer an authoritarian solution to democratic processes to handle the social problems.

On Oct. 21, new parliamentary elections took place in which Law and Justice and Civic Platform were major players as in 2005. Members of both parties have roots in Solidarity, the Polish anti-communist movement of the 1980s, and together enjoyed around 70 percent of votes in the new election. In comparison, the left-wing alliance of the Left and Democrats--transformed from former communist forces--had only 13 percent.

Communism seemed never to return. The debate today in Polish politics is whether the country should follow a radical or moderate reform route. While the Civic Platform touted its promise to create a Polish economic miracle in pre-election campaigns, the Law and Justice has pushed for a just society. The result of the Oct. 21 election, which reversed the 2005 election outcome and gave the Civic Platform an upper hand with 9 percent more support than the Law and Justice, indicated what the Polish people want for their future and, more importantly, how they wish to achieve it.
Law and Justice came to power in 2005 under the banner of fighting corruption and organized crime. For the Kaczynski twins, a corrupt network of ex-communists, former secret agents and businessmen was plaguing the country and had to be purged before a just society could be created.

Many still recall the outbreak of what was later dubbed Rywingate in December 2002, in which Lew Rywin, a film producer, was accused of asking for bribes on behalf of the governing party, then the left-wing Democratic Left Alliance, to pass a tailor-made law favorable to one particular media conglomerate. The event contributed to the drastic loss of popularity of the left alliance.

Shaping up unmistakably as a vanguard of moral revolution, Law and Justice is setting the agenda in Polish politics, as well as causing controversy with its heavy-handedness. The government has demonstrated a resolve to fight crime and corruption by revamping state organs. It disbanded the old security services, created a new intelligence agency and established an anti-corruption office. The twin's personal record of leading a pristine lifestyle have supporters believing they are incorruptible. A series of corruption scandals captured on video footage over the past months and shortly before the election, however, has given rise to critics who claim that the government is going too far.

For Maria Jarosz, a sociology professor of the Polish Academy of Sciences, corruption in Poland is real, yet she believed the fight against corruption was not.
Poland after the transition saw major political players in the old regime holding on to privileges over distribution of state resources. They mostly fell into the hands of former communist members, who continued to be privileged. People in power enjoyed the rights to appoint personnel to important posts of companies in which the state was the majority stockholder, she explained.

Jarosz argued that the Kaczynskis have proved themselves incapable of governing. "The economy has not improved for underprivileged people, and corruption, as always, lies in the abuse of privileges enjoyed by political elites of whatever parties that are in power," she claimed Sept. 19. Jarosz, who published a book on political elites and corruption in post-communist Poland in 2005, said that this kind of abuse existed even in the Law and Justice-led government that publicly committed to fighting corruption.

Jadwiga Staniszkis, a professor of sociology at the University of Warsaw and the Polish Academy of Sciences, argued that "controlled provocation" by Law and Justice in hunting down corruption cases has been a partial success.

"Corruption was so deeply entrenched," she said Sept. 21, "now, they will think twice before doing it." Though, she noted, it is not because of institutional reform. It is because people are afraid that somebody is just provoking them. "This fight against corruption by using extra-legal tools might be very costly, but the results are real."
The awkward situation of being unable to reform a system while being embroiled in it seems to be a common obstacle for political leaders of new democracies emerging through peaceful means from authoritarian one-party rule in the past decade. Like political leaders in Taiwan, the new generation of Polish political elites faces a state machine and political resources leftover by regime change. How to deal with them and consolidate power becomes a priority for the new government, and if nothing substantial is achieved, distrust increases in society.

"New governments are not experienced in running a state machine, and flawed administrating causes confrontation between supporters and opponents," Chen Yin-huei of the Institute of International Relations at the University of Warsaw, and now a lecturer at National Chengchi University in Taiwan, said Aug. 23, when comparing the situation in Poland and Taiwan.

Chen explained that opponents often accused current governments of being as bureaucratic and authoritarian as their predecessors and of repeating corrupt practices, while supporters blame critics for obstructing reform and allowing room for the old regime to return.

Taiwan's President Chen Shui-bian of the Democratic Progressive Party, who was given a mandate for change in 2000 and 2004, is accused of corruption regarding a presidential discretionary fund for diplomatic affairs created under the Kuomintang one-party rule.

Furthermore, the DPP's efforts to review KMT assets and return some to the state coffers have not been realized due to insufficient parliamentary representation. With supporters of reform split, the ruling party is now hoping to secure direct popular mandate by pursuing a national referendum. But critics accuse the DPP government of being even more authoritarian than the KMT during its last decade in power.

According to Staniszkis, this awkward situation stems from the inherent paradox of political endeavors. In the case of Law and Justice, it sought to concentrate power to deliver on its political promises. For instance, the Law and Justice government combined the position of justice minister and general prosecutor. The move to concentrate power through this institutional rearrangement has caused resistance in the court system and incited distrust among judges. In addition, putting loyal, rather than capable, persons in important positions to concentrate power also mired party leaders in the stricture of corruption.

Commenting on the moral revolution the Kaczynski brothers pledged to carry out in order to sever the connection between communism and post-communism, Staniszkis pointed out the paradox in such an endeavor: It is not possible to conduct revolution within the framework of law. Their effort to impose change while keeping legal limits that are working for continuity has led to the radical rhetoric and politicization of everything, she explained.

On another level, it is not feasible to strengthen state when "at the moment the state, though existing, is beginning to have more complicated problems than it did before," Staniskis said. "Building a modern state with concentrated power is not possible anymore."

"A state gets more control when it is withdrawing," she continued, indicating that the only possible way is to communicate and be trusted. When political elites failed to recognize the limits of political maneuvering, thus not being able to have control, they become more radical, she said.

For Staniszkis, the Polish people are more sophisticated than they seem to be as shown in election results and polls that revealed the make-up of electoral bases of the different political parties. The political elite failed to recognize the real process governing people's everyday life, she argued, and the brawling between political factions often remained simply verbal ones.

For instance, Law and Justice asked voters to choose "either solidarity or freedom," with the former associated with the party and the latter with its opponents, during the campaign two years ago. The reality was that people were not so simplistic and they wanted to combine both, Staniszkis said. "People are able to understand the different logic of electoral discourse and different necessities of how you should operate when you are in charge of something, and you should cooperate," she said, expecting a grand coalition between Law and Justice and Civic Platform.

The mass emigration of 2 million Polish people, mostly to other European countries in the past few years, is also manifesting in the people's pragmatism. "There is a process of learning in Polish society, and the learning process is accelerating after the country joined the European Union [in 2004]," Staniszkis said. "These people are experiencing different types of relations in society, different relationship between bureaucrats and the people," she continued.

Staniszkis expected real, rather than verbal, conflicts to bring about realization by the political elite of what a modern state is about, as well as the ability to negotiate in a totally different context to the one 17 years ago that signaled the beginning of the end for communism in Poland.

On the other hand, she also expected the younger generation of Polish people to be able to understand how the global logic operates, since they are engaged in the integration of Europe through studying or working abroad. "In order to reform your society and to adjust to global processes to win, you need many, many years," she concluded.

The younger generation of Polish people also seems to have the patience to see their country changed, viewing domestic affairs in a broader context. Harasimowicz said she felt optimistic about Poland's future, comparing its transition process with what happened in other European countries. "It has been only two years [since the right-wing coalition rule], and I would like to give it some more time," she said.

This article appears in Taiwan Journal Oct. 26, 2007.

Note: I wrote this after a visit to Poland in 2007. Post it here to commemorate those who died in the Katyn fog and forest.

Museums provide closure for victims

Pieces of wall saved from the 1944 uprising are displayed against an enlarged picture of Warsaw that shows what the city looked like before its destruction. (Photo by June Tsai)


By June Tsai

Taiwan Journal sent staff writer June Tsai to Poland on a special assignment to write stories comparing the political systems, histories and cultures of Taiwan and Poland. This article, the last of the series, explores the development of memorial museums and their role in political transition. Through recording the horrors of the past, such museums help people to come to grips with the present.


Warsaw's Wola District and the year 1944 have become synonymous in recent years with Polish patriotism and the fight for freedom. Six years into World war II, an Aug. 1 uprising broke out in the city aimed at ending German occupation. Such affirmative action ended not in liberation, however, but in the destruction of 90 percent of the Polish capital and the massacre of between 40,000 and 100,000 civilians and prisoners of war by the Nazis. The Wola District, where the Warsaw Rising Museum opened 60 years later in 2004, is now a symbol of national remembrance and history.

In Taiwan, the Taipei 228 Memorial Museum commemorating the thousands of victims of the February 28 Incident of 1947 was established in 1997, the 50th anniversary of the event. The museum is themed around the conflict, suppression and massacre of local people after Chiang Kai-shek took over Japanese-occupied Taiwan at the end of World War II in 1945. The subsequent martial law period silenced open discussion of the massacre in Taiwan for many years, but the situation was finally addressed seriously with the opening of the museum at the site of the Japanese-built 1930 Taipei Broadcasting Bureau--important at the time of the incident as the latest developments were broadcast from there.

Both museums were born as Poland and Taiwan transformed themselves from authoritarian to democratic systems, and people's formerly suppressed memories of traumatic events from the past began to surface. According to Chen Chia-li, an assistant professor of museum studies at the Taipei National University of the Arts, five decades seems long enough for a generation to come to terms with the pain it suffered and to appeal for its address. Also, this period of time allows people to view the events in a way that is truer to the facts. "If it's too close in time, no one can bear to face the memories because they are too painful an experience to remember, or too cruel a truth to accept," Chen said Nov. 2.

Memorial museums have come into vogue since the turn of the new century. People have begun to remember numerous traumatic experiences from the last century, which was scarred by two world wars and countless human atrocities. The Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, the Imperial War Museum in London and the new Yad Vashem in Jerusalem are some of the most prominent examples of memorial museums opened in the last 10 years. It was only in 2001 that a Committee of Memorial Museums in Remembrance of the Victims of Public Crimes, or the ICMEMO, was set up under the International Council of Museums, a non-governmental organization created in 1946 for conservation of the world's natural and cultural heritage.

The ICMEMO states in its official website that "the goal of memorial museums is to commemorate victims of State, socially determined and ideologically motivated crimes." It also specifies that memorial museums "seek to convey information about historical events in a way that retains a historical perspective while making strong links to the present."

For Chen, memorial museums have everything to do with identity politics, in nations both new and old. Although aiming to commemorate, both the Warsaw Rising and Taipei 228 museums serve to shape collective memory and solidify identity with the new nations after emerging as democracies.

In the case of Poland, the country broke away from the Soviet bloc in 1989 and politically shook off the shackles of post-communism when votes for left-wing parties dropped to just over 10 percent in recent elections. In the case of Taiwan, the period of martial law was ended and the first opposition party, the Democratic Progressive Party, was allowed to exist in 1987. Direct presidential elections took place in Taiwan in 1996. In both countries, present political dynamics played a role in how such museums are realized and in determining their success.

Explaining why the Warsaw Rising Museum did not come into existence until 15 years after Poland's 1989 transition to democracy, museum Deputy Director Pawe Ukielski said Sept. 24 that history was not in the mainstream of discussion after the end of communism. "The dominant voice said that we should forget the past and leave it to historians and look to build the future. Yet people gradually came to realize that it is impossible to build anything without a good foundation. Identity and history are the great foundation of every society," he explained.

The complete truth about the Warsaw uprising was buried during the communist era, first because of the dubious role of the Soviet Union during the rebellion, and second, for the fear that admitting the truth would render communist rule illegal in Poland. Insurgents, or their leaders, were vilified by the communist regime as the cause of Warsaw nearly being entirely destroyed by German forces in their efforts to suppress the insurrection.

The movement to see the long-desired memorial museum come into existence was initiated in 2003 by the then Warsaw Mayor Lech Kaczynski, who became Polish president in 2005. The project team solicited opinions and contributions of memorabilia from veterans, who also took an active part in bringing the museum to life. Amazingly, it took only 13 months for the museum to be ready so that it could open on the same day as the 60th anniversary of the uprising, Ukielski said.

Beginning life as a tram power plant, the transformed state-of-the-art multimedia museum now recreates events and details of each and every aspect of life in the city of Warsaw during the battle. Images, sounds and objects were installed in such a way as to convey the atmosphere of the time and have visitors come as close as possible to experiencing the 63-day battle.

"We wanted to tell the big history through small stories of individuals," Ukielski said. "It's always more touching if you hear the memory of a woman who survived the genocide in Wola District than to read that '40,000 people were killed during three days.'" The museum has attracted 800,000 visitors since opening, with 15 percent coming from abroad.

According to Chen, also author of 2007's Chinese-language "Wound on Exhibition: Notes on Memory and Trauma of Museums," museums such as the Warsaw Rising usually enjoy the support and love of the country's citizens, but Taipei 228 Memorial Museum is an unusual exception.

The reason lies in the fact that many of those who suffered--referred to either as "benshenren," being Taiwanese that were residents prior to 1945, or "waishenren," a term that encompasses Chinese that immigrated after 1945 and anybody representing the KMT regime--still live side by side today. With Taiwan having transformed itself into a democracy, these yet-to-be-reconciled two groups have divided views on such a museum, and current political struggle is undermining the effectiveness of the establishment, Chen said.

Taipei 228 was opened with the support of President Chen Shui-bian who was then Taipei mayor. Its establishment recognized emerging calls from all parts of society to deal with the loss suffered by victims of the February 28 Incident and the White Terror era--the subsequent political persecution carried out by the Kuomintang where thousands were jailed and many executed--by publicly acknowledging and commemorating the period. Families of victims are the main providers of exhibition objects. They also make up the largest group of volunteers working full-time in the museum.

Commenting on Taipei 228, Chen Chia-li said that the exhibition is generally in keeping with history, though it has a long way to go before becoming the ideal memorial museum. The permanent exhibition delineates the developments surrounding, leading up to and after the February 28 Incident from the perspective of local Taiwanese, as they were the first and primary victims in the incident. As a consequence, Taipei 228, like other museums of its kind, has visitors empathize with the victims. Yet, "to be captious, the exhibition does not really show how other groups or sub-groups of people felt and lived at the time, for example the perpetrators or women in general," she explained.

"It is technically very difficult to present all kinds of perspectives in a museum themed with the February 28 Incident," Chen said. "On the one hand, the victims' representatives insist that their sadness and loss need to be acknowledged. On the other, the 'waishenren' group still cannot accept this version of history with a calm mind. This is shown in the conspicuously low presence of 'waishenren' among museum visitors and their refusal to participate in interviews for museum studies," Chen added.

Therefore, identifying a way to represent the incident so the "benshenren" feel as if their suffering is being soothed while the "waishenren" do not see the museum as an accusation against them is a real challenge for curators.

Chen admitted that the irreconcilable situation has much to do with post-KMT politics, in which the incident was repeatedly used as a tool for mobilizing group feelings. In addition, she pointed out, changes in the city government have affected the organization of the museum, hence the effectiveness of promoting its original cause.

For Chen, a memorial museum should promote reflection on history and the reconciliation of different groups. This takes not only political will but also the wisdom to make a museum fair and interesting enough to bring visitors together from both groups living in the same society. This allows them to better know one another, pass down collective memories and avoid making similar mistakes in the future. "Museum professionalism must be respected in this regard," she said.





This article appears in Taiwan Journal Nov. 30, 2007.

In commemoration of those who died near Katyn forest April 10, 2010.

Aboriginal minister stresses self-government and creativity

By June Tsai

From disaster prevention and relief to political participation, from industrial development to cultural sustainability, from community empowerment to international connections—issues concerning Taiwan’s indigenous peoples today are no less complicated than those that involve a de jure state.

For Sun Ta-chuan, minister of the Cabinet-level Council of Indigenous Peoples, a viable system is crucial to dealing with problems confronting his peoples, in view of their relatively disadvantaged status vis-a-vis Taiwan’s Han Chinese population, who dominate politics and policymaking.

Sun, known as Paelabang danapan in his ethnic Puyuma language, took charge of aboriginal issues one month after the deadliest typhoon to strike Taiwan in 50 years.

Statistics show that Typhoon Morakot swept across a region in which 80 percent of the villages are aboriginal communities. Upon becoming minister in September 2009, Sun’s priority was disaster relief and reconstruction for the villagers who lost their homes and crops to the landslides brought on by the storm’s relentless rainfall.

Sun accepted the task with a view to both the past and the future. Ten years earlier, as CIP deputy minister, the responsibility of helping rebuild the lives of the aboriginal peoples in the aftermath of the 7.3-magnitude earthquake of Sept. 21, 1999 had fallen to him, too.

The change of power in the central government in 2000, however, saw him leave the position. “I feel obligated to take on the job again this time, because experience has shown how post-disaster reconstruction work will be manipulated to focus on infrastructure rather than on culture, and that would be the worst thing that could happen now to the indigenous peoples,” Sun said April 9.

Sun pointed out that the government has earmarked a total of NT$7.5 billion (US$238 million) for a three-year post-typhoon reconstruction program. “Without institutional monitoring, the money could easily have been turned into pork barrel spending,” he said. “As we know from the past, such misuse can tear a tribal community apart from within.”

As a link between indigenous groups and Han Chinese society, Sun said, one of his most important tasks was to make policymakers and government administrators recognize the importance of enlisting aboriginal participation in every step of reconstruction.

“Luckily, officials involved fully understood the gist of the special post-typhoon reconstruction act, which is respect for the decisions of the indigenous communities,” Sun said. They have kept this spirit in mind as they work on relocation, schooling and employment plans, he added.

“There have been many discussions, with compromises and concessions from both sides, and I think this is a great learning opportunity for the ROC government.”

Sun, a Belgium-educated aboriginal cultural activist, takes a historical point of view. “Under Japanese colonial rule [1895-1945], the aboriginal peoples were relocated in an arbitrary way. Later, decades of economy-driven development of the country under the ROC government forced aborigines to abandon their different lifestyles. This has disadvantaged them in the modern society.”

“Our peoples gradually became dependent on help from the outside and from the government, further eclipsing their self-confidence and making them susceptible to negative influences,” he lamented. Yet, “the post-disaster reconstruction work is an opportunity to reverse the relationship.”

Rebuilding disaster-affected regions has highlighted the issues plaguing the indigenous peoples in recent history, including how to develop sustainable livelihoods, safeguard their cultures and social systems from disintegration, and preserve ecological balance.

For Sun, “the enactment of a law providing self-government for the indigenous peoples would offer an answer to how they can successfully deal with these issues.”

A bill granting self-governance has been in the works for many years, and Sun has put it at the top of his policy priorities.

“Advocacy of self-government has been at the center of aboriginal rights movements since the 1980s.” Sun stressed that it has grown even more urgent after the typhoon, in view of the large number of indigenous communities affected by the disaster.

Sun experienced a letdown in January when the government adopted an amendment to the Local Government Act merging several cities and counties, which tribal leaders and local rights activists said could further marginalize ethnic minorities.

Moreover, ingrained interests in current administrative demarcations make it difficult for tribes to connect. “The Bunun villages, for example, are scattered throughout Nantou and across the Central Mountain Range in Hualien and Taitung counties, along their ancestors’ route of migration.”

“With this situation in mind, we propose to institute aboriginal self-governments that allow an overlapping of jurisdictions with existing local governments, in the spirit of co-rule,” Sun said. The council is negotiating the details of self-rule with other agencies such as the Forestry Bureau under the Council of Agriculture and national parks, he added.

“The best result would be for the aborigines to be charged with management of national park land,” Sun said with a chuckle, aware of the current unlikelihood of this eventuality.

Sun said the institutionalized effort toward self-government would be able to accommodate existing attempts at self-rule by many ethnic groups. The Saisiyat people, for example, have created their own ethnic council. “A legal foundation for self-government will help keep electioneering at bay and build solidarity within communities,” he said.

On the international front, Sun harbors a great vision regarding the potential contributions of Taiwan’s indigenous peoples. He recently revisited Palau, Kiribati, Tuvalu, the Marshall Islands, Nauru and the Solomon Islands, where he had previously conducted research, as part of the diplomatic delegation accompanying President Ma Ying-jeou’s state visit to ROC South Pacific allies.

“Linguistic and archaeological research shows that the island’s indigenous groups are inextricably connected with other Austronesian peoples in South Pacific countries,” he said.

“This paves the way for Taiwan’s meaningful engagement with peoples and governments of the region,” Sun said. But for the majority population of Taiwan, usually regarded as falling within the Chinese cultural sphere, developing deep connections with other Austronesian peoples requires a more profound understanding of Taiwan’s own history as well as that of the regions surrounding it.

“Austronesian peoples played a significant role in the establishment of anthropology as a field of study and as an inspiration for modern Western art. In the future, they will play an equally significant role in issues pertaining to the oceans and climate.”

“Taiwanese people should also become more aware of the strategic importance of the island and its history as a cultural and commercial hub in the 16th and 17th centuries,” Sun said, citing Dutch and Spanish historical sources.

To promote Taiwan’s strategic status and communication with Pacific countries, the CIP is mulling active educational and cultural exchange programs. In June, an international forum on Austronesian studies will be held in Taiwan. Also, in collaboration with the Jesuit Society in Taiwan, National Taiwan University and Academia Sinica, a Pacific cultural research center is scheduled to be set up this year.

After all, culture is always foremost in the minister’s mind. “The people of Taiwan do not have confidence in, or even understanding of, their own culture, because they lack a historical perspective,” Sun asserted. “The way the indigenous peoples of the island and their cultures are treated is a litmus test for how people here value their history and culture.”

One good sign is the increasing number of master’s theses and doctoral dissertations on aboriginal literature in Taiwan, Sun pointed out. Indigenous people in the 1980s turned to writing in search of identity and self-assertion. In recent years, “many of our young writers have won major literary prizes.”

Their accomplishments have also drawn attention from foreign researchers and publishers. “The collected works of Thao writer Syaman Rapongan, for example, are being translated into Japanese,” Sun noted. Aboriginal artists are also making significant contributions in other forms of art, including popular music and performance arts such as dance and theater.

For Sun, aboriginal creativity grows from strong roots in the land, and the power of cultural energy is far greater than any government policy in keeping a people alive and well.

“All institutional efforts and official cultural events will be nullified if the people of a nation lose their creativity, culture and sense of history.”

This article is published in "Taiwan Today" April 16, 2010.