San Diego, 7 July 1998
Tillman Durdin, a longtime foreign correspondent for the New York
Times, passed away in San Diego on Tuesday, 7 July 1998. Together
with his wife Peggy, Mr. Durdin was one of the few Western reporters
to write about the February
28th Massacre in Taiwan in 1947.
After the end of World War II, the Allies allowed Chiang
Kai-shek's troops to occupy Taiwan, where they started a reign of
repression and corruption. The 28 February 1947 arrest of a woman
selling cigarettes without a license was the spark which led to
large-scale public protests. In the aftermath, Chiang's troops
murdered between 20.000 and 28.000 Taiwanese, many of them political
leaders, intellectuals, doctors, and lawyers.
Tillman Durdin's account in the New
York Times, and Peggy Durdin's articles in The
Nation give a gripping account of the events of what
came to be known as the "February 28th Incident", the
start of 40 years of Martial Law in Taiwan.
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