1987 Lieyu massacre

The entire Kinmen Archipelago, a group of about twenty islands and islets, were still considered a war zone at the time and were under martial law. The Kinmen Defense Command (, or KDC), a field army of the Republic of China (ROC) Army, controlled the islands in an effort to prevent an attack by the People's Liberation Army after the ROC had ended its attempt to retake mainland China by force in 1970. On 18 December 1978, Deng Xiaoping announced the reform and opening up policy, followed by the establishment of 4 special economic zones. The international port of Xiamen was expanded for commercial traffic on 7 October 1980. The KDC Commander, General , was promoted to director of the National Security Bureau in Taipei on 15 December, and General assumed the command. In the following spring, Chao instructed the 158 Division Commander, Major-general Gong Li () to construct two propaganda walls—one 3.2m high and 20m long on Dadan Island, and the other on Erdan Island—with slogans proclaiming "Three Principles of the People Unify China" shining with neon lights at night until July 1995. Completed in August 1986, the walls faced the international seaway of Xiamen Bay, where Xi Jinping (later CCP general secretary) was the Deputy Mayor of Xiamen City. Refugees Following the Vietnam War (1955–1975), the Cambodian–Vietnamese War (1978–1979), and the Sino-Vietnamese War (1979), many Indochinese refugees fled abroad. They often had to move several times as local authorities rejected those displaced by the crisis. The Penghu Defense Command ( or PDC) cooperated with the "Hai-piao Project" () (an arrangement of the Overseas Community Affairs Council and the Chinese Association for Relief and Ensuing Services) to transport 2,098 refugees in 45 boats and the "Ren-de Project" () to relocate another 6,497 refugees by air. In total, over 12,500 people were rescued starting in 1975. On 1 April 1982, the Executive Yuan issued the "Pingjing Project" (), a procedure instructing the Ministry of National Defense (MND) to return the refugees. The MND updated its standard operating procedure in 1985 but did not actually enforce the new guidance. Instead, the actual practice in the frontline was to kill detainees if a purge failed. They would either bury corpses perfunctorily on the beach or let the tides pull the bodies into the sea. The MND were well aware of the practice, but turned a blind eye. They forged ahead with purposeful "refugee warfare" which endangered national security. In April 1986, an incident occurred where a young couple, both teachers, swam from Xiamen to Dadan Island seeking asylum. In mid-July 1986, General Chao inspected the outlying islets of Lieyu, and noticed that the amphibious reconnaissance battalion (ARB-101, ) took in an unknown person swimming near Dadan after the local garrison failed to expel him away. Chao was furious, condemning the ARB leader, and left in anger; the Dadan commander then called all the units to announce the kill-them-all policy to prevent anybody arriving onshore. The neighboring Erdan Island commander (), Deputy Brigade Commander of the 473 Brigade lieutenant colonel Zhong—who had executed 7 stranded fishermen in 1983 and relayed the KDC's order for the aforementioned killings at Shi Islet Nuclear weapons program Both the KDC and the Matsu Defense Command (, or MDC) guarded nuclear artillery strike plans targeting neighboring regions during the Cold War. These targeted regions included the strategic Xiamen City, even though the affected radius also covered the ROC's own stationed Dadan and Erdan Islands. It is alleged that a previous nuclear weapons program undertaken since 1967 was forced to stop in 1977 under the pressure of United States and IAEA, but was followed by another hidden agenda. In 1986, after nearly 20 years of research and simulation testing, a successful minimized nuclear test at the Jioupeng military field in Pingtung was recorded by US satellite imagery; later, in 1988, it was questioned by the director of American Institute in Taiwan, David Dean, according to the diary of Superior-general Hau Pei-tsun. The development of the nuclear weapons program was eventually exposed by Colonel Chang Hsien-yi, deputy director of the Institute of Nuclear Energy Research at the National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology, who defected to the United States in January 1988. A ROC military agent traced Chang's child after school to locate their home in Washington, D.C. until finally violated the federal witness protection program, further leading to the confrontation of Director Dean with General Hau. ==Massacre==

Unify China" wall on Dadan Island On 6 March 1987, a boat of Vietnamese refugees who had been rejected in Hong Kong arrived in Kinmen to request political asylum. However, General Chao rejected the demand, and ordered an ARB-101 patrol boat to tow away the boat from the shore on the morning of 7 March, with a warning not to return. However, for reasons unclear, information about the boat's presence in the Southern Sea was never forwarded to the front line of the coastal defense units, including those on Lieyu Island. As a seasonal heavy fog appeared on the coast and gradually turned clear in the afternoon, The 629 Light Artillery Battalion—which happened to be taking a field drill practice in the ancient airport on the northeastern beachfront—launched a single star shell which lit up the background horizon sky, but found no invasion force approaching. Meanwhile, warning shots followed by expelling shots were fired in sequence as per the procedure steps in the rules of engagement, using T57 rifles, .30 caliber, and .50 caliber machine guns in short range by the 3rd Company and the reserve platoons of three companies while another one was coming in, totaling over 200 infantrymen. The Vietnamese boat was stranded on the sand beach southwest of Donggang () Fishery Port (Fort L-05), a sensitive strategic point in front of the mobile positions of M40 recoilless rifles and M30 mortars. Nearby was the communication transit station nicknamed "04" (a homonym of 'You die' in Chinese pronunciation) on a hill with a 30°-angle blind corner on radar screens caused by the steep hillside. This hillside lay in front of the classified 240 mm howitzer M1 ("Black Dragon" or "Nuclear Cannon") railway gun positions of Kinmen Defense Command, and the 155/105 mm artillery battalions of 158 Division. As such, the foreign boat's landing location on the beach beneath aroused significant concern. The boat was hit by crossfire from L-05, L-06, and Fort Fuxing Islet of the 2nd Battalion, plus two M72 LAW (light anti-tank weapon) rounds by the WPN Company in reinforcement. Armor-piercing shells penetrated through the sky-blue wooden hull without detonation. Three unarmed Vietnamese left the boat, raised their hands, and pled in Chinese, "Don't shoot...!" but were all shot dead. The local 3rd Dongang Company () Commander, Lieutenant Chang, received the order from the brigade commander to dispatch a search team to board the boat. Two hand grenades were thrown into the boat before the search team found that all the passengers were Vietnamese refugees with no weapons on board. The passengers said that the vessel had experienced a mechanical failure. Because of the heavy fog, the strong seasonal currents and the rising tide since late afternoon, the boat drifted into the open bay. The surviving passengers and the bodies of the dead were taken out of the boat and placed on the beach, with neither first aid nor any life support supply rendered. Following intense telecommunication with the Division Headquarters, the commanders at the scene received orders from their superiors—alleged directly by Commander General Chao—to kill the passengers to eliminate all the eyewitnesses. The following identification evidence was collected at the scene, and enlisted through the P4 (Internal Security) channel of the Political Warfare Department, the KDC, and the MND Army Commands HQ: • one "Declaration of no possession lost/damaged on boat" issued by the Director of Immigration Office of Hong Kong Alan Carter on 12 December 1986 • four copies of the "Notification on the voluntary alternative options to stay under indefinite custody or the assistance to continue navigation" by the British Hong Kong Government on 12 January 1987 • several personal ID documents from the French Indochina government • two kerosene barrels printed in English with "Singapore" on surface • several Singaporean magazines and Hong Kong newspapers • a notebook written in English with the last entry on 6 March For unknown reasons, none of this evidence was later adopted by either the prosecutor or the judge, hence all the court documents named the victims only as the "unknown people" (). The last words of the pregnant woman were in English: "Help me... Help my baby...My baby seven months...", before she and two other women were killed by .45 caliber handgun shots; the battalion operation officer then made a joke on her dead body (never showing remorse during the annual reunions in subsequent years). A boy got up to flee but was shot in the shoulder and fell down, until another officer stepped forward to finish him off. The entire boat was instructed to be burned (aside from the 3-blade propeller), then buried in sand to destroy all the evidence. The last victim, a young boy hidden underneath a board cell, was also found and killed by order without exception. ==Revelation==

Cover-up A local store owner heard the crying of the refugees overnight and made a phone call to inform Huang Chao-hui, the National Assembly member in Kaohsiung, but the contact was soon lost. At the time, all civilian and public long-distance phone calls were being routinely monitored by the Communication Supervision Section of Kinmen Defense Command. Nevertheless, the bodies were not buried deeply at the first site. Influenced by tidal seawater and high temperatures, the bodies soon began to decompose and were dug out by wild dogs from the landfill () on the back side of the western hill. The bodies were later reburied collectively in one mound at a second site on the higher ground next to the tree line. This task was performed by the 1st Company, who had just resumed their posts after winning the annual Army Physical and Combat Competitions in Taiwan. Accounts of ghost sightings prompted villagers to hold religious ceremonies, and a tiny shrine was built by soldiers on the beach the next year. This activity made it all the more difficult to prevent the spread of information about the incident. In 2021, the local villagers rebuilt a new shrine beside the path inland in lament. In early May 1987, British Hong Kong newspapers first reported that the refugee boat went missing after leaving the port along the coast for Kinmen, Taiwan. Informed by the overseas office, higher officials questioned the Kinmen Defense Command but got no concrete response. Instead, the Command urgently swapped this front line coast defense battalion with a reserve battalion from the training base in order to strengthen the personnel control and communication restriction to prevent further leaking news. In addition, the battalion's unit designation codes were shifted for the following two years to confuse outsiders. Two "extra bonuses" of cash summing up to half a month of a captain's salary ($6,000) were also abnormally awarded to the company commanders against government regulations and ethics, on the eve of the Dragon Boat Festival. However, at the end of May, recently discharged conscript soldiers from Kinmen began to arrive in Taiwan proper and finally were able to appeal to the newly founded opposition party, the Democratic Progressive Party. The information of the massacre started to spread in Taiwan. Ten weeks after the massacre, the President of the Republic of China (Taiwan), Chiang Ching-kuo, reacted to the cover-up by the 158 Division and the Kinmen Defense Command. General Chao Wan-fu said he was unaware of the event. General Chao ordered all the 158 Division officers to be present as participating the cover-up operation. At the end of their conscription service terms, the soldier witnesses were ordered to sign an oath to maintain silence and guard the secret for life before returning home to Taiwan. Her questions were repeatedly denied by the military spokesman Major-general Chang Hui Yuan (), who accused Congresswoman Wu of "sabotaging the national reputation", and claimed it was actually "a Chinese fishing boat being sunk in the sea after ignoring the warnings". That night, uniform propaganda was broadcast on the evening news on all public TV channels. The next morning, on 6 June, all local newspapers received government instructions to publicize the press release of the Central News Agency originating from the Military News Agency (). Censorship The case was classified as a military secret for 20 years to prevent any further information leaks. Subsequent media reports were censored, and publication of the case was banned by the Nationalist government. In April 1989, when the police broke into the office of the magazine '' (which had publicized case interviews and editorials before) for an arrest on a separate charge of treason, editor-in-chief Cheng Nan-jung set himself on fire and died in protest for freedom of speech. Separately, military journalist of Independence Evening Post'' was sentenced to 1 year and 7 months with a probation period of 3 years in November 1991. For the same reason, the Hujingtou Battle Museum of Lieyu (built in 1989) conspicuously left out any information on this part of history, nor was it documented in the official archives of the Kinmen National Park that later took over management of the beach. The official cover-up story of the Chinese fishing boat being sunk by one shell in a bombardment was what was told to the public for 13 years, until being uncovered by the publication of 8-year Diary of the Chief of the General Staff (1981–1989) () by Superior-general Hau in 2000. The Government of the Republic of China has made no comment thereafter. ==Aftermath==

Political stage endorsed President Chiang's decree to lift the martial law, four months after the Lieyu massacre. With the support of the Formosan Association for Public Affairs, the United States House of Representatives hence passed the "Taiwan Democracy Resolution" (H.R.1777) on 17 June 1987, calling on the ROC government to end the martial law ruling, lift the ban on political parties, accelerate the realization of democracy including the protection of freedom of speech and assembly, and reform the parliament election system for the legitimacy of government; the United States Senate passed the same resolution in December. Though the resolution did not direct Taiwan to integrate into neoliberal globalization, it gradually turned the political movement for Taiwanese self-identity against the Chinese unification agenda within ROC politics. The opposition party, supported by the international community, took the chance to force Chiang Ching-kuo to lift martial law and begin the democratization process to distance itself from the Kuomintang's One China Policy. This developed with the promotion of neoliberal tendencies in Taiwan in a way that blocked political forces that favored a return to reunification. Later, on 14 July, Minister Cheng endorsed President Chiang's historic decree to end the notorious 38-year-long period of martial law in Taiwan (1948–1987), except the War Zone Administration () on the frontier regions, including Kinmen and Matsu Islands, which remained under military governance until 7 November 1992. Furthermore, on 2 November, President Chiang lifted a ban preventing people from visiting their divided families in China across the Taiwan Strait by allowing transfer through a third place, such as Hong Kong, Okinawa, or Tokyo. Investigation After the scandal was exposed, President Chiang Ching-kuo received a letter from Amnesty International expressing humanitarian concern, and assigned the Chief of General Staff, Superior-general Hau, to investigate this case. Nonetheless, the court-martial did not follow the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention and the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees to process this case. The accused have never been charged for wrongdoings to international refugees, regardless of evidence, but each was prosecuted for killing several "unknown people" of the "bandit area" (applying only to the domestic criminal codes) on 11 September 1987. Division Commander Gong, Political Warfare Director Colonel Chang, and the P4 Section Leader Lieutenant-Colonel Hong were set free in 10 days. Principal staff officer Major-general Fan Jai-yu () was promoted to the commander of the 210 Heavy Infantry Division of Hualien Expansion in 1989; then further to lieutenant-general, commander of the Penghu Defense Command in 1994; and then to the Principal of the Political Warfare Cadres Academy in 1996. Division Commander Major-general Gong Li was shifted to the Chief of Staff of the War College, National Defense University; then promoted to the deputy commander of the in 1992; and then became the Civil Level-12 Director of of the Veterans Affairs Council in 2000. Kinmen Defense Commander Chao was promoted to deputy chief commander general of the Republic of China Army in 1989, and further to Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Republic of China Armed Forces in 1991; then appointed with honours as a to the President of the Republic of China in two terms; and then received the permanent title as the reviewer member of the until his death on 28 February 2016. His official funeral was proceeded with his coffin covered by the national flag and the military salute of the top-ranked generals. Vice-president Wu Den-yih presented a commendation decree by President Ma Ying-jeou, who praised Chao's 50-year career in national security with so-called "loyalty, diligence, bravery, perseverance, intelligence, wisdom, insight and proficiency" (), and that "his virtue and conducts have set a good example model for future generations to follow..." (). Chao was buried in the National Wuzhi Mountain Military Cemetery. Later developments Twenty years later, in May 2007, Major Liu Yu, the 1st Battalion Commander, proclaimed in a military magazine interview that they were executing direct superior orders, and one officer who killed the refugees was never charged. Ten years later, in January 2018, Liu was invited by the Kinmen National Park administration to re-visit the old posts of the South Lieyu Defense Team. On the beach, he recalled to a China Times journalist that he "handled" over 100 corpses—including in the Donggang Incident—during his total four years of assignments within three KDC terms. On 19 July 2020, Instructor Colonel (Ret.) Liao Nianhan () of the ROC Military Academy interviewed the WPN company commander Captain Li Zhong-yan () to re-affirm the official testimony that he had, in person, found that all the passengers had died after firing two M72 LAW shells, and hence nobody got out of the boat and there were no killings by shooting. Liao's article dignified the four convicted schoolmates with "the ultimate sublime respect" (), in comparison to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Mỹ Lai massacre. The chilling effect of the massacre led to an absence of international refugees in the waters around Kinmen, and the last Jiangmei refugee camp, which had operated for 11 years in Penghu, was shut down on 15 November 1988 due to the policy change. On 7 November 1992, the provisional martial law control was historically lifted after 42 years of the War Zone Administration in power, and KDC returned governmental and civilian services management to the local county offices. Over 100 years after its establishment in 1911, the Republic of China still lacked a refugee law to regulate the political asylum process in accordance with modern international law, and its government did not render an apology or any legal compensation to the families or country of the victims. On 3 October 2018, legislator Freddy Lim, former Chairman of the Amnesty International Taiwan, inquired in a hearing of the to examine the victims' files in the military archives in order to express an apology to their families through the Vietnamese Representative Office (), but Minister of National Defense General Yen Teh-fa disagreed: "The troops were following the Standard operating procedure (SOP rule) of the martial law period to execute [the orders], though it might look like having some issues nowadays; also, they have been court-martialed...". On 13 July 2022, Control Yuan member submitted a re-investigation report after one year of documentation based on the provided military archives and interviews with nearly 20 veteran witnesses. Interviewees included the convicted officers, whose testimonies (without passing lie detection) contradicted each other with retracted confessions, and contradicted new evidence and controversies at the first site, since the last CY investigation reported 34 years ago was considered incomplete. The report condemned the KDC for falsifying the facts, the court-martial prosecutor and judge for failing their duties of investigation, and the MND for ignoring the case for 35 years. It then recommended the Ministry of Justice re-open the case with a special appeal for legal re-investigation. Kao demanded the MND restart an internal investigation and search for evidence, data and items which the Control Yuan could not acquire before, and reveal them to the public or return them to the victims' families. A complete administrative investigation report should be submitted within 6 months. Chiu expressed hope that the state pay attention to transitional justice to reopen the investigation, face historical mistakes and address the shortcomings of Taiwan's long overdue missing Refugee Law to pass a bill that meets international human rights standards this year. A MND representative attended the conference to express their condolences and stressed accompanying the families to the scenes of the incidents, but maintained that the soldiers were carrying out their duties, and did not respond to the re-investigation demand. The ROC military has continued to assert that the soldiers' actions were justified. The incident then stands at the juncture of certain issues, including transitional justice, inclusive of past crimes committed by the military and its refusal to be accountable in the present, as well as Taiwan's poor treatment of refugees, which has affected individuals from a number of nationalities. the legal exercise apply to all ranks and positions including officers, soldiers and national leaders regardless subject to the justice even after decades. ==Legacy==

• Hushen () – This 2019 novel by the retired school principal Tian-lu Jian () analyzes the humanity concern of the situation at the first site, with his personal experience of service time under Lieyu tunnels. It won the 16th Kinmen Literature Award. • Lao Dzai () – The 2021 short screenplay by Colonel Chou Yi-ching (), deputy commander of the Psychological Warfare Team of the Political Warfare Bureau forged this case as a single misconduct of the 2nd-lieutenant conscription officer from the National Taiwan University, who had volunteered to the frontline as a platoon leader, then covered by the Senior master sergeant's help, ending in the refugees receiving compensation and left in peace. Zhou received the top prize of the 55th Annual Military Literature Award from the Minister of National Defense General Chiu Kuo-cheng in person. In reality, there was only one conscription platoon officer with the university background in 1B, who led the 2nd Company reserve from Yang Tsuo to arrive the outskirt late without participating the massacre; the referred SMSgt had retired hence not in the camp; ROC conscription system distributed the personnel only by random sortition or superior selection after finishing the basic training; never giving the "volunteer" option then. ==See also==