2/28 - Remembering the China Massacre they would rather not talk about

[Bonobo]

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2012/02/24/2003526250

Victims blast Hau’s 228 denial

500, not 20,000:

The former premier said only 500 people were killed during the 228 Massacre, not tens of thousands as the Executive Yuan said while he was the premier

Relatives of victims of the 228 Massacre yesterday criticized former premier Hau Pei-tsun (郝柏村 over his comments that only about 500 people — instead of the commonly seen estimates of between 20,000 and 30,000 — were killed during the massacre, calling it a baseless rewriting of history.

“What happened then created pain that has forever been buried in the hearts of the victims’ families, and what Hau did was tantamount to rubbing salt into their wounds. [His words] could trigger ethnic tensions in the country,” Lee said.
In his op-ed, Hau said textbooks were mistaken in their claims that more than 10,000 people were killed during the 228 Massacre, adding that according to his understanding, only a little more than 500 people were killed in the crackdown on the uprising

The 228 Massacre refers to an nationwide uprising against the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) regime that broke out on Feb. 27, 1947, two years after the KMT took over Taiwan, because of government corruption and economic hardships under the KMT.

At first, those fighting the KMT won the upper hand. However, the uprising was violently crushed when the regime sent troops from China.

Since the majority of the population in Taiwan at the time were native Taiwanese, while the ruling elite and soldiers were mostly from China, the massacre triggered ethnic tensions and it has sometimes been considered an ethnic conflict.