In Taiwan, teens protest statues honoring former ruler Chiang Kai-shek

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http://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-taiwan-chiang-20140811-story.html



A portrait of former Taiwanese President Chiang Kai-shek is seen during a protest at the parliament building in Taipei in March.

In Taiwan, teens protest statues honoring former ruler Chiang Kai-shek
By Ralph Jennings
8.11.2014

Nearly 40 years after Chiang Kai-shek's death, statues of the autocratic leader continue to loom large on school campuses across the island he long ruled. The smiling, balding bronze and stone figures are ubiquitous to the degree that many students barely notice them.

In recent weeks, however, indifference turned to hostility when students from seven Taiwanese high schools united to mark the 1987 anniversary of the end of martial law first imposed by Chiang. The young protesters demanded that effigies of the three-decade ruler be removed.

"Just because students are used to seeing his statues doesn't mean they think the statues are right," said Tung Lee-wei, 16, a first-year student at Cheng Kung Senior High School in Taipei who helped organize the campaign.

The placard-festooned protests were the latest broadside against both the memory of Chiang and the current rule of his old Kuomintang, or Nationalist, party. Critics concerned that repressive rule could return to the democratically run island are particularly alarmed as its government grows closer economically to longtime archrival China.