At today's Cabinet meeting, Premier Lai Ching-te received a Ministry of Culture (MOC) briefing on preparatory work and future plans for the National Human Rights Museum, saying the facility is expected to promote and realize modern concepts of human rights in Taiwan.
With the promulgation of the organizational act of the National Human Rights Museum on December 13, and of the act on promoting transitional justice on December 27, the museum is expected to help the Executive Yuan's Transitional Justice Commission and other agencies carry out such important work as the declassification of political documents, preservation of historical sites of injustice, restoration of historical truths, and education on human rights. These efforts will keep intact the record of Taiwan's authoritarian past and make Taiwan the foremost country in Asia for human rights, the premier said.
According to the MOC, the organizational act of the National Human Rights Museum was finally promulgated this year following 16 years of promotion and six years of preparatory work. Next year as the world marks the 70th anniversary of the U.N.'s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the museum will officially open at the Green Island White Terror Memorial Park on May 17 (coinciding with the Green Island Human Rights Arts Festival) and the Jingmei White Terror Memorial Park on May 18 (International Museum Day). The inauguration of the museum will declare to the world Taiwan's unwavering commitment to protecting the universal values of human rights.
The museum's core missions are to pursue historical justice, restore historical truths, promote human rights education, and work with government agencies to release political documents, the MOC said. It will also conduct comparisons, interpretations and research into oral histories, visual documents, personal journals written by victims, and letters to their families, using multiple perspectives to restore truth to history. In the spirit of the act on promoting transitional justice, the museum will also release as appropriate 10,067 documents and other materials inherited from the Compensation Foundation for Wrongful Trials on Charges of Sedition and Espionage during the Martial Law Period.