As Taiwan heads to the polls for a presidential election on January 13, we look back at a dark chapter in the island's past. Almost 80 years ago, on February 28, 1947, tens of thousands of Taiwanese who had risen up against the government were murdered. It was the start of the "White Terror" period. For 40 years, the Taiwanese were deprived of their freedoms, wrongly imprisoned or even executed. In 1987, with the lifting of martial law, Taiwan began its march towards democracy, and three decades later a Transitional Justice Commission was set up to work towards reconciliation. Our correspondent Lucie Barbazanges reports on a past that continues to haunt the Taiwanese people.
At the end of World War II, the island of Taiwan, which had been occupied for 50 years by Japan, was handed over to China, ruled at the time by Chiang Kai-shek's Chinese Nationalist Party, the Kuomintang. But in 1947, the Chinese troops who landed on the island were met with rioting from the local population, whose living conditions were deteriorating. The ensuing crackdown turned into a massacre. So began the "White Terror", which lasted for 40 years.
