The 2-28 Incident

By Alice Tzou '01

The 228 Event is fundamentally important to Taiwanese history and culture. It took place in Taiwan on February 28, 1947. The 228 Event, or Er-Er-Ba in Mandarin, is a piece of recent Asian history little known in the West. However its consequences are so profound that its reverberations are still felt today.

In 1945, Taiwan came under the leadership of Chinese Kuomintang (KMT) governor, Chen Yi, following the defeat of the AxisPowers in World War II which included Taiwan’s former colonizer, Japan.

February 28, 1947 marked the dawning of the Taiwanese people’s organized resistance to the corrupt bureaucracy, a drastic turn from their previous passive acceptance. On that day, about 2000 people gathered to protest several instances of police indemnities, including the beating of Lin Jiang-Mai, a woman peddling illegal cigarettes, and the killing of an innocent bystander that previous evening.

The government reacted by firing machine guns into the crowd, killing and wounding several demonstrators. The antagonism escalated into a full-scale confrontation, spawning more uprisings across the island. Chen Yi began targeting the participants as traitors to the KMT government, dispatching military troops to silence the protest.

On March 10th, the KMT imposed martial law on the island, a period which became known as The White Terror, during which the KMT implemented unlawful arrests and crackdowns. Citizens, particularly the educated elite, mysteriously disappeared. The total number of deaths during that period has been reported to be anywhere from 2000 to 100,000.

Only now has the Taiwan government gradually come to acknowledge and allow discussion of this atrocity. The February 28 Incident Memorial Foundation erected a 228 monument in Taipei on February 28, 1997.

To learn more about the this incident, visit the following sites:

http://www.uta.edu/accounting/faculty/tsay/feb28hd.htm

http://www.taiwanese.com/~bst/228

 

Back to April 1999 Newsletter Home

 

Home || Upcoming Events || TSA Newsletter || Resources || Photo Album

  • Webmistress: shuang@wellesley.edu
  • Wellesley College Taiwanese Students Association
  • Date Created: March 29, 1999
  • Last modified: April 7, 2000
  • Expires: June 30, 2001