英文摘要 |
Spain and Taiwan have highly similar historical backgrounds and made similar policy choices in their respective past dictatorships and subsequent periods of democratic transition. During the period of democratic transition, both states chose to respond to past human rights violations in a more reserved manner instead of taking on a punishment model. Some scholars suggest that the period of democratic transition does not end until transitional justice is fully completed. Therefore, this article marks the first election after the end of dictatorship as the beginning of democratization and observes the official measures undertaken by Spain and Taiwan dealing with past human rights violations thereafter. Spain passed the Amnesty Law in 1977 to prohibit any investigation of past crimes; Taiwan passed several compensation acts in the 1990s, mainly aimed at monetary compensation for political victims. Interestingly, the attitudes and achievements of Spain and Taiwan have changed significantly over the course of several decades. Spain passed the 2007 Historical Memory Law and drafted a bill, the Democratic Memory Act, in 2020. Taiwan has since passed several transitional justice-related laws, and even established the Transitional Justice Commission, which functions as a truth commission, taking the initiative to investigate the truth. This article aims to analyze two issues. What are the contextual factors for Spain and Taiwan when addressing transitional justice during democratic transition and what are those which are applicable once progress has been made many years later? What efforts have Spain and Taiwan made and what is still to be done in the future? This article argues that three essential factors have shaped the recent achievements of transitional justice in the two states: the nature of their democratic transition, the efforts of civil society, and the interaction of political power. Notably, however, as such progress has been dependent upon these various factors, the recent achievements in both states are full of instability. States must carefully examine the compatibility of transitional justice projects with international human rights law. Otherwise, these efforts will result in political retaliation, or even worse, risk being overturned when political power is transferred. |