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Cabinet proposes declassifying some national secrets
The cabinet is proposing amendments to the Political Archives Act and the Classified National Security Information Protection Act to allow political archives from Taiwan's authoritarian past to be made public.
The government says it wants to make certain national security information public as part of its efforts to promote transitional justice.
National Archive Administration Director-General Lin Qiu-yen says of the estimated 4,500 political archives classified as permanently confidential under the current law, half of them could be declassified next year if the amendments pass.
Under the amendments to the two laws, national secrets listed as top secrets under Article 12 of the latter law will be released into public domain no later than 40 years after they were created. Under current laws, those secrets are kept confidential forever.
If lawmakers pass the amendments, the classified archives created before 1984 would be released in about six months after the revised laws take effect.
Those archives include the files related to the 1980 murders of pro-democracy activist Lin I-hsiung's mother and two daughters and the 1981 killing of pro-democracy advocate Chen Wen-cheng.
