Formosan Association for Public Affairs: Young Professional Group

228 Facebook Campaign • February 28, 2009

Date:

Saturday, February 28

Time:

12:00 AM–11:59 PM

Place:

Facebook.com
Your profile & status message
Everywhere
[map]

Contact:

Daphne Lin
pihan...@yahoo.com

More Info:

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=64775908922

Note: Download the 228 Facebook Logo [.jpg].

Dear FAPA YPG members,

In commemoration of Taiwan’s 2-28 Incident of 1947, please consider taking the following actions as part of a coordinated Facebook campaign starting midnight tomorrow:

  1. Change your profile picture to feature the 228 logo
  2. Change your status message to the suggested one-liner below
  3. Post on your wall a brief summary description of the massacre, suggestion below

(Your Name) is commemorating the Taiwanese massacre of 1947: http://www.uta.edu/accounting/faculty/tsay/feb28hd.htm.

A brief summary of the 2-28 incident from the Brookings Institution:

On February 28, 1947, the arrest of a cigarette vendor in Taipei led to large-scale protests by the native Taiwanese against the corruption and repression of Chiang Kai-shek’s Chinese Nationalist government, which had come over from China (to Taiwan) after Japan’s defeat by the Allied forces in 1945. Following the protests, troops that Chiang’s government secretly sent from mainland China rounded up and executed an entire generation of leading figures, including students, lawyers, and doctors. Scholars estimate that up to 28,000 people lost their lives in the turmoil. During the “White Terror” of the subsequent years, the Nationalists ruled Taiwan under martial law, which ended only when democratization set in during the mid-1980s. The “228 Incident” remains a defining event in the political divide that exists in Taiwan today.

Many thanks for your help in raising awareness about Taiwan’s historical and political situation.

Huge kudos to Stephanie Lai and Steven Chang for being the “brainchild” behind this 228 Facebook campaign, and all the accompanying research on best links/descriptions to use! And kudos to Judy Chen for being our artist behind the profile picture attached! While the implementation may look simple, quite some time has been spent debating various ideas for commemorating 228, as well as details of the current one. Just think of the impact when all FAPA members nation-wide simultaneously change their profile pictures (with accompanying status messages and wall posts)…the visibility across all our social networks can be quite effective in educating the public on this key, yet relatively unknown genocide in Taiwan.

Sincerely,
FAPA-YPG SF Chapter