SNA (Taoyuan) — An hour’s drive from central Taipei lies a wasteland for Chiang Kai-shek statues, symbols of Taiwan’s authoritarian past.

Dozens of pairs of eyes follow visitors around a park close to Chiang’s mausoleum. Pass one bronze statue of the former authoritarian leader and another is just a few steps away.

Rows of statues of the late leader–standing, sitting, on horseback, or busts–have been lining up at the Cihu Memorial Sculpture Park in an outlying district of Taoyuan city for the past two decades.

Plaques say they have been donated by schools and other institutions around Taiwan to remember Chiang’s “past glorious feats.” But others see them as unwanted symbols of Taiwan’s repressive past, and say ridding the island of Chiang is not happening fast enough.

Military “generalissimo” Chiang and his Nationalist Party ruled over China in the 1930s and 1940s. They were allowed to take over the running of Taiwan in 1945 after Japan–Taiwan’s colonial ruler–was defeated in the Pacific War.

When Chiang lost mainland China to Mao Zedong’s Communists in 1949, he fled to Taiwan and rebased his Republic of China government. He ruled over Taiwan until his death in 1975, failing in his dream to one day take back control of the mainland.

In today’s Taiwan, opinions toward Chiang are mixed. While some say Chiang was an anti-Communist hero who helped to modernize the island’s economy, many condemn his authoritarian rule, including his imposition of martial law and harsh suppression of political dissidents and others who had a strong sense of Taiwanese identity.

Over the years, detractors have vandalized his statues, often with red paint to symbolize his bloody rule and to call for formal Taiwanese independence. In 2018, his tomb, close to the park filled with statues, was targeted. Two men were fined for throwing paint over it on the anniversary of the 228 Incident, an anti-authoritarian uprising in 1947 whose violent put down by Chiang’s Nationalist government resulted in thousands of deaths and disappearances, and marked the beginning of decades of White Terror.

Taiwan began a transition to democracy in the 1980s and 1990s, and Chiang’s Nationalist Party continued to rule Taiwan until 2000.

At the time, there were still thousands of statues on display at schools and public buildings across Taiwan, the remnants of a personality cult that Chiang and his government had promoted.

The first statue was sent to the Cihu Memorial Sculpture Park in 2000, by the former county government of Kaohsiung. More than two hundred now stand in the park, which has become both a memorial to Chiang and a statue graveyard, while many others have been destroyed. The park also has some statues of his son, Chiang Ching-kuo, who came to power after his father’s death and started Taiwan on its path to democracy.

One of the latest to be moved to the park–a bronze Chiang on a plinth that had stood outside Keelung Railway Station for nearly 70 years–was covered with orange paint on the morning of its removal last month. Phrases including “Taiwan” and “build a nation” were sprayed on it in white. The statue later broke apart as workers attempted to move it. They reportedly had trouble because of its reinforced base. Authorities have said the statue will be repaired and sent to the Cihu park as planned.

After the incident last month, Fight for Justice, a group that is pushing for an end to “the colonial rule of the Republic of China” and the establishment of a new nation for Taiwan, said on Facebook that police had investigated one of their members in connection to the vandalism but that they had had no evidence as to who the perpetrators were.

Fight for Justice said the statue had been an affront to the Taiwanese public. In a statement, they said that after the 228 Incident in 1947, Republic of China (ROC) authorities soon landed in Keelung and began massacring people.

“Later, the ROC authorities actually erected a bronze statue of the butcher Chiang Kai-shek at the site of the massacre and where the blood had flowed,” the group said.

“It has towered over that spot for seventy years, which is equivalent to humiliating the Taiwanese people for seventy years.”

Over the past twenty years, there have been various moves to take down statues and reminders of Chiang with the aim of closing a painful and repressive chapter of Taiwan’s history.

Taipei’s main airport was renamed from Chiang Kai-shek International Airport to Taoyuan International Airport in 2006. A year later, the square outside the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, then called the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Square, was changed to Liberty Square. The square sits within a central Taipei district named after Chiang, however, and there are still many roads that bear his name.

In the latest effort, lawmakers in December 2017 passed an Act on Promoting Transitional Justice, under which symbols of Taiwan’s authoritarian past are meant to be removed or renamed.

Since then, 403 “authoritarian symbols,” including statues, have been taken down as of the end of March, according to the government’s Transitional Justice Commission, which was established as part of the same act.

This includes 43 since August, while there are still an estimated 537 yet to be removed, it said earlier this month. Of these, 84 are the responsibility of the central government and 453 local governments.

Not everyone agrees with tearing down statues. Feng Shih-kuan, chairman of the government’s Veterans Affairs Council–one of the agencies singled out by the Transitional Justice Commission for not removing statues fast enough–called on people to be tolerant of history, and let future generations judge Chiang’s actions.

“(A bronze statue) can’t speak or walk, and no one is going to worship it,” Feng, a former air force general and defense minister, told lawmakers last month.

“If it is taken away, won’t there be something missing from Taiwan’s history?”

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