Dealing with Taiwan’s nightmares past and present

Rowen argues that for many Taiwanese, transitional justice is unfinished business. “The 2.28 Incident has been the most straightforward episode of state violence that Taiwan has addressed in its evolving approach to transitional justice,” he says. “Although monuments and memorials to that bloody moment have proliferated, and youth now carry the torch forward with annual events like the 2.28 Gongsheng [coexistence] music and politics ‘festival,’ it has been less easy to name perpetrators or make comprehensive reparations for the later White Terror period, which lasted decades and implicated far more people.”