National Human Rights Museum - Green Island White Terror Memorial Park Introduction
The "White Terror Green Island Memorial Park" was originally known as the "Green Island Human Rights Culture Park." It is located at No. 20 Jiangjun Rock, Gongguan Village, Green Island Township, Taitung County, covering an area of approximately 32 hectares, situated at the northeast corner of Green Island. The park has witnessed the history of various prison cultures, including the Burned Island Refugee Center, the New Life Guidance Center, and the Oasis Villa during different periods, serving as a place of significant human rights violations under an authoritarian government. The architectural complex of the entire park, along with its natural and ecological landscapes, reflects the long-term interactions between human beings and nature, integrating various forms of cultural heritage and landforms into a cultural landscape. During the martial law period, the "White Terror Green Island Memorial Park" served as a detention center for military, political, and public security cases. The period of the New Life Guidance Center from 1951 to 1970 and the Oasis Villa from 1972 to 1987 (during the period of the Ministry of National Defense’s reformatory prison) marked significant differences in spatial patterns, with the Oasis Villa constructed in response to the 1970 Taiyuan Incident, resulting in a highly enclosed prison with high walls, contrasting sharply with the earlier New Life Guidance Center. The "White Terror Green Island Memorial Park" holds special significance in the history of the Taiwanese people's struggle for human rights. Each era has its own sense of helplessness and lament, and the memorial park was born during a politically sensitive time, previously designated for the imprisonment of political prisoners and dissenters. The park is located in front of Jiangjun Rock in Gongguan Village on Green Island, encompassing areas such as Jiangjun Rock, the Human Rights Memorial Park, Oasis Villa, and Chongqing Camp. Among these, the Oasis Villa and the New Life Guidance Center were places for reformatory education and ideological transformation. Stepping into the park, one can feel the heavy and oppressive atmosphere, making it a good place to understand Taiwan's history of the White Terror and the development of human rights. Oasis Villa was once the reformatory prison run by the Ministry of National Defense on Green Island. Completed in 1972, it gradually housed ideological prisoners transferred from Taiyuan Prison and various military prisons, fully retaining the once-towering walls, barbed wire, playground, auditorium, Bagua Building, solitary confinement cells, and 52 prison rooms of various sizes. The right-side entrance in front of the Oasis Villa, known as the Ghost Gate, was the only way into the Oasis Villa, symbolizing slim chances of survival after passing through it. Walking into the Oasis Villa reveals numerous historical materials related to the White Terror period, and the narrow prison with its dim, heavy atmosphere still lingers even after many years. The New Life Guidance Center, initiated in the early years of the Republic of China 39 (1950), was established due to the overcrowding of political prisoners in prisons across Taiwan, with most sent to Green Island for endless labor and ideological reform, making it the largest forced labor concentration camp. The current New Life Guidance Center recreates past squad barracks, classrooms, kitchens, etc. Entering the rooms, one can see lifelike wax figures. The small dormitories (cells) housed about 120 to 160 people, who had to sleep in overlapping positions, making it difficult even to turn over, allowing one to genuinely feel their suffering and unfair treatment at that time. They could only use the brief hour before bedtime to write letters home, play chess, or practice violin or erhu, slightly releasing the mental and physical oppression they endured. The Green Island Human Rights Memorial Park features a monument and an uneven grassland designed to represent the dark periods of oppression and inequality that were buried underground. The Human Rights Memorial symbolizes the pursuit of freedom from fear in the new era. It was particularly chosen to start construction on International Human Rights Day in 1999, also known as the "Tears Monument." Its spiral structure collects rainwater through channels on both sides, leading to the center, resembling tears. The inscription beside it reads "Tears Monument." It bears the words of the renowned writer Po Yang: "In that era, how many mothers cried through the long nights for their children imprisoned on this island?" These 28 words encapsulate the suffering of that time.
