What?! Why Me?! (with virtual exhibition link)

What?! Why Me?!

“Freedom of Speech” is a part of basic human rights, but during the period of martial law in Taiwan, there were more than thousands of imprisonment cases due to speech, text, or images. Under the “No right to free speech”, many people were sentenced to death, life-imprisonment, limited length of a prison term, or reformatory education, for which creating a chilling effect on the entire population.


However, since the lifting of martial law until today, the proportion of studies focusing on the “Freedom of Speech” cases were comparatively low. The reason is that early reports concentrated mainly on cases that were highly attracting public attention, especially for those cases of well-known public figures or cases of large numbers of victims. However, the majority of the people involved were mostly ordinary people, but due to the tendency of selective studies in the past, they were less studied, reported, or even neglected.


Compiling the results of many years of hard work and research, this exhibition integrates digital and manual indexing methods to take a crucial step forward in investigating political cases involving free speech with the purpose of inspiring and promoting awareness on human rights and history.