Taiwan Church News
3803 Edition
Jan. 13 ~ 19, 2025
Weekly Topical
As a Church under White-Terror Surveillance, PCT reports KMT’s Human Rights Abuses
Reported by Chiu Kuo-rong from Taipei
National Human Rights Museum (NHRM) and Taiwan History Institute (THI) of Academia Sinica jointly held a compilation project of “Survey of Taiwan’s White Terror History under KMT regime”, and convened the “2025 White Terror History Workshop” at Academia Sinica on Jan 9, 2025. Victims of white terror, their families or descendants, scholars and experts were invited to participate in the workshop to share their stories or read research papers.
Dr Chung Shu-min, THI director of Academia Sinica, said in her opening speech that the purpose of compiling stories related to white terror history is to make it become the knowledge base of Taiwan’s white terror history. She expressed that many speeches and studies presented in the workshop for years had been collected into the “Human Rights Memory Bank” by NHRM and open to the public.
In the morning sessions on Jan 9, many white terror victims and their families were invited to share their stories, including Mr Hsu Ching-fu, who was jailed for hiding Shih Ming-teh after the Formosa Magazine incident in 1979; Mr Masao Nikar (Lin Ying-fu) in the case of Independent Taiwan Society; children of Mr Tsai Der-ben, who wrote the famous lyrics of Elegy of Sweet Potatoes; Ms Ku Pei-jen, daughter of the former military judge Mr Gu Pu-hsian.
Hosted by Dr Wang Chao-wen, chairman of the PCT Church History Committee, the theme of workshop sessions in the afternoon on Jan 9th was “The PCT under Surveillance by KMT Regime”, inviting three speakers to share their stories: Rev Chen Nan-chou, former vice dean of Yushan Theological Seminary, Ms Lin Mei-rong, human rights worker, and Rev Ng Tiat-gan, director of the PCT Research and Development Center.
Regarding the question why the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan was closely monitored by KMT regime during the white terror, Dr Wang Chao-wen pointed out there were three main reasons: first, the PCT’s governance structure aligned with the characteristics of a democratic check-and-balance; second, its active engagement within the ecumenical church institutes(I.e., World Council of Churches (WCC), which was regarded by the KMT to be a pro-communism institute); third, many critical pastoral statements on Taiwan sovereignty and human rights were released in the 1970s.
She reminded that these PCT statements emphasized the values of democratization and Taiwan sovereignty: for example, the PCT Declaration of Human Rights in 1977 called for Taiwan to become a “new and independent country”, which was deemed as a serious threat to KMT regime, and Rev Kao Jun-ming, the late general secretary of the PCT was constantly tracked and finally arrested in 1980.
Rev Chen Nan-chou said that at the end of 1971, the PCT issued the “Statement on Our National Fate”, which emphasized the self-determination of the people of Taiwan and appealed a re-election of the National Assembly. Since then, he said, the PCT started to be closely monitored by KMT regime.
As both a student of Tainan Theological Seminary and a graduate student of National Chong Hsing University in early 1970s, Rev Chen recalled, once the police came to knock his door and interrogate his social activities. As this unusual police inquiry might have been related to last Christmas painting exhibition, held by the PCT College Student Center and the U.S. Information Service at Taichung, he believed the police check was actually due to his artistic reflection between war and peace.
After graduating from Tainan Theological Seminary, Rev Chen was sent to serve and teach at Yu-Shan Theological Seminary. The secret police still came to visit him regularly in plain clothes. In that period, he also learned that some students worked for KMT regime in exchange for living allowances.
In 1979, Rev Chen served as a secretary for the PCT campus ministry. In the same year, the Formosa Magazine incident occurred, and the police stayed more frequently in the office of Rev Kao Jun-ming. Once the late Rev Kao Jun-ming’s talks at a meeting weirdly appeared in the file record of his military trial, which strongly confirmed that a tapping device had been secretly set up inside the PCT’s GM offices.
Ms Lin Mei-rong said that because her neighbors are political prisoners in white terror, she was very resistant to KMT and sympathetic to the oppressed since she was a girl. After entering the PCT ministry office to serve, she also came to be closely monitored by KMT.
However, her political files under KMT surveillance were full of errors, such as being recorded as a cadre of both Taiwan’s State-Building College and Organizer Training Course of a Canadian grassroots community. As a matter of fact, she has never participated in these organizations.
What’s more absurd were, she said, even privacy records of personal illness and gift purchase had been registered into the file. Despite the long-term political surveillance, she said that faith has always been her strength to resist. “The support of the church gives me peace under pressure and grants me more courage to fight for justice, ” she remarked.
Rev Ng Tiat-gan recalled he was terribly shocked, when the church was surrounded by the police during a Sunday service at Taitung in 1971. In 1984, Rev Ng was admitted to Tainan Theological Seminary and was soon contacted by the military police unit to play an under-cover informant. At that time, big money offered to buy his soul, but he did not surrender. This experience brought him a lot of pressure, and he even sought personal advice from Rev Huang Bo-he, the the dean of seminary.
Rev Ng showed the surveillance files preserved by Taiwan Garrison Command at that time, recording his participations in the book club with other students with details. He also showcased a surveillance file, scribed ”Case of Ng Tiat-gan“ in1985, recording the relevant situations after he gave a sermon in the Yen-Shuei Church in Chiayi County. He stressed that these white-terror experiences not only revealed the social reality during KMT’s martial law, but also highlighted the importance of religious faith and resilient consciousness for good.
Translated by Peter Wolfe
