Taipei, Oct. 19 (CNA) The Cabinet on Thursday proposed law amendments to abolish rules that allow certain national security information to remain permanently classified, as the current government says it wants to make available political archives from the nation’s authoritarian past, to promote transitional justice.
Of all the estimated 4,500 political archives classified as permanently confidential under the current law, half of them are expected to be declassified next year if the amendment process goes smoothly, said Lin Chiu-yen (林秋燕), director-general of the National Archive Administration (NAA).
Under the amendments to the Political Archives Act and the Classified National Security Information Protection Act proposed by the Cabinet, national secrets listed as top secrets under Article 12 of the latter law shall be declassified no later than 40 years after their creation.
Under current laws, those secrets are kept confidential forever.
If the Legislature passes the amendments, those classified archives created before 1984 would be released in about six months after the revised laws take effect, scheduled on Feb. 28, a day remembered each year for the 228 Incident that occurred in Taiwan in 1947, in which thousands of people were killed in a crackdown against anti-government unrest, Lin told the press after the Cabinet meeting.
That would include the files related to two high-profile unresolved cases committed during the authoritarian period — the 1980 murders of pro-democracy activist Lin I-hsiung’s (林義雄) mother and two daughters and the homicide of Chen Wen-chen (陳文成), a math professor and pro-democracy advocate in 1981 — classified as top secret by the National Security Bureau, according to the NAA.
Political archives are defined by law as documents or other records dating to the period from Aug. 15, 1945 to Nov. 6, 1992 related to the 228 Incident and files established in the martial law era under the then Kuomintang (KMT) government that are maintained by government agencies, political parties and their affiliated organizations, as well as party-owned entities.
The amendments being put forward Thursday were part of the government’s ongoing efforts to reveal past human rights abuses committed by state authorities. They are in line with President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) 2016 campaign platform to seek transitional justice, the NAA said.
According to the proposed amendments, the period of confidentiality for national secrets related to the sources of national security information should not exceed 30 years in principle.
If confidentiality of national secrets is considered necessary after 30 years, it can be extended in increments of up to 10 years, subject to approval by the original agency or its superior authority.
For national secrets to be kept confidential for over 60 years, it would require approval from the superior authority, according to the amendments.
