Two Control Yuan members released a report on the murder of former Democratic Progressive Party Chairman Lin Yi-hsiung's (???) mother and twin daughters in 1980 and asked the government to re-investigate the case, for which no one has even been arrested.
At a press conference, Control Yuan members Tsai Chung-yi (???) and Fan Sun-lu (???) said several questions remain to be answered, including who ordered the killing, the involvement of criminal gangs in the incident, and why a fingerprint found at the scene remains unidentified.
While Lin was in detention after being arrested for his involvement in the Kaohsiung Incident in 1979, his mother and 7-year-old twin daughters were killed, with a third daughter seriously injured, on Feb. 28, 1980. At the time, Taiwan was still under Martial Law and many believed the killings were a warning to other democracy activists.
The killer or killers have never been identified.
In the report, Tsai and Fan point out how the Taiwan Garrison Command, a secretive police and national security body that suppressed dissent around Taiwan before it was abolished in 1992, actively worked to impede the original investigation.
This included intervening and obstructing the investigation, manipulating the media, covering up possible suspects, and hiring gangsters to attack dissidents, it said.
The Control Yuan, the top government watchdog, in 1996 tried to reopen the investigation into the case, but no substantial findings were uncovered. In the years since, four other investigative efforts have been initiated by the Criminal Investigation Bureau and the Taiwan High Prosecutors Office but no new actionable evidence has been discovered.
Last year, the two Control Yuan members decided to look into the case after the National Security Bureau declassified many of its files for the Transitional Justice Commission in 2020, several of which indicated certain intelligence agencies deliberately misled the direction of the investigation into the murders.
Tsai and Fan said although there is currently no evidence to indicate which intelligence officers were involved in the case, the Taiwan Garrison Command was definitely involved in the incident.
Tsai said he has informed Lin about their efforts to looking into the case, but the latter refused to comment further other than to say the murderer or murderers should be brought to justice.
Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel