Taipei, July 28 (CNA) Scholars and officials from various countries shared their experience in advancing transitional justice, which became a popular term in Taiwan in recent years, with their counterparts from Taiwan in an international conference Saturday.
The "International Conference on the Comparative Studies of Transitional Justice" gathered participants from Germany, Hungary, Mongolia and Hungary, including former Prime Minister of East Germany Lother de Maiziere with a focus on the handling of illegally-gained party assets.
Maiziere explained in his speech how former East Germany worked on a full-scale transformation on various fronts after overcoming the communist dictatorship and the unification of Germany. One of the most important steps was the liquidation of the assets of the Socialist Unity Party (SED), former East Germany ruling party.
Transitional justice is more than handling party assets, he said. Maziere also went on details about how Germany re-established traditional provinces, which were abolished during the communist era, worked on judiciary transformation, reviewed the criminal and civil law, reviewed the sentences of all prisoners, and re-organized the police force.
The same effort could also be found in Poland, said Lo Chih-cheng, a professor at Soochow University. The success of transitional justice in a number of Eastern European countries came from positive dialogues between the opposition and the ruling parties, he said.
The transition in Poland was initiated by a compromise, negotiated in a round table by members of the state party PZPR and the democratic opposition, said Andrea Genest, a research fellow at the Center for Research of Contemporary History Potsdam.
The handling off the former Hungarian communist ruling party HSWP (Hugarian Socialist Workers' and Peasants' Party) has not been very successful as there was no overall settlement, said Krisztian Ungvary, advisor of Hungarian Ministry for Culture and Education.
In Mongolia, a country that has been trying to walk out of the shadow from the former Soviet Union since it declared independence, the focus has been placed on the privatization of state properties, said Nemekhbayar Dashbaljir, an officer of Mongolia's State Property Committee.
The one-day conference, which was organized by Taiwan Thinktank, discussed the theme of transitional justice in three sessions on the global experience in dealing with party assets and the interdependent relationship between transitional justice and democratization.