A Book Launch Of Wu-Han Grand Hotel To Seek Justice

白色恐怖冤獄受害人楊薰春介紹《一九五九武漢大旅社》。(攝影/邱國榮)

Taiwan Church News
3401 Edition
1 – 7 May, 2017
Topical News

A Book Launch Of Wu-Han Grand Hotel To Seek Justice

Reported by Chiu Kuo-rong

In the afternoon on April 30, Avant-Garde Press held a book launch of Wu-Han Grand Hotel, describing the longest appealing criminal case in Taiwan legal history, on how a hotel manager’s suicide in July 1959 evolving into a KMT’s fabrication of charges, trials and jails of seven innocent people from 1959 to 1967 under white terror period and even lasts up to date yet still without a justice given to those suffered. Mrs Yang Suing-tsuen, 94-year-old and the only survivor of those seven innocent defendants, remarked: “Only justice to restore back on this case, Taiwan’s juridical system could be born again!”

In July 1959, Yao Jia-chien, an overseas Chinese hired as manager of Wu-Han Grand Hotel was found hanged himself inside the hotel. Five months later, it’s very likely due to KMT’s internal strife supported by decades of studies later, this case was turned into a homicide one: Hwang Hsue-wen(hotel boss), Yang Suing-tsuen(boss’ wife), Lin Tzu-zen(hotel accountant), Yu Chuan-chiu(hotel clerk), Wu Liang(hotel cleaner), Wang Ai-yun(hotel clerk), and Chen Hua-chou(NTU professor of chemistry) were all charged in the crime of colluding homicide. Under nine re-trials from 1960 to 1969, these innocent defendants were finally sentenced to death penalty, life sentence, and various jail terms respectively.

Dr Zeng Ban-cheng, former director of National Museum of Taiwan Literature, remarked in the book launch that this case was the representative story experienced by the Taiwanese people under KMT’s oppressive regime in white terror. Based on his decades long studies in literature, reaching a motto as “The strongest protest ever is to publicize!”, Dr Zeng recommended this book as a first-rate literary writing and expected an authentic social reform could be ignited in Taiwan.

Translated by Peter Wolfe

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