Changing of the guard ceremonies at the memorial for the island’s first president will be moved outdoors from next week.
Taiwan’s honor guards will no longer hold changing of the guard ceremonies around a giant statue of the island’s first president, Chiang Kai-shek, as part of a nationwide effort to stop “worshipping authoritarianism.”
From Monday, the elaborate military performance will be moved outdoors on Taipei’s Democracy Boulevard, near the capital’s iconic blue and white memorial hall dedicated to Chiang, which houses his 6.3-meter bronze statue.
“Eliminating the cult of personality and eliminating the cult of authoritarianism is the current goal to promote transitional justice,” Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture said in a statement on Friday.
Chiang and his nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) troops fled mainland China for Taiwan in 1949 to establish a rival government after losing a civil war with Mao Zedong’s communists.
Generally praised in his lifetime as an anti-communist hero, many in modern Taiwan revile him as a despot who imprisoned and killed thousands of opponents during his rule.
When he died in 1975, his son Chiang Ching-kuo assumed power and began provisional measures towards greater political openness, paving the way for the country’s first direct presidential election in 1996.
Today, the country’s Transitional Justice Commission is investigating cases of political persecution that occurred during the Chiang government’s “white terror” campaign against dissent.
Many young Taiwanese believe Chiang’s legacy smacks of what they see as authoritarianism in mainland China, which views Taiwan as its territory and wants to bring the self-governed island under its control.
In recent years, Taiwan has lowered Chiang’s posthumous profile, removing hundreds of other statues of the former leader to a lakeside park near his mausoleum in the northern city of Taoyuan.
In 2006, the name of the island’s main international airport was changed from Chiang Kai-shek International Airport to Taoyuan International Airport.
The families of the victims of the 1947 massacre by Chiang’s nationalist troops have long demanded that his statue at the Taipei memorial also be removed.
This story originally appeared on Aljazeera.com read the full story
