Family wants Taiwan's late Nationalist leader buried in hometown

TAIPEI, Dec 23, 2007 (AFP) - The family of Taiwan's late Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek want his body to be removed from a mausoleum in the island and to be buried in mainland China, a relative said Sunday.

Fang Chih-yi made the comments while paying respects at Chiang Kai-shek's mausoleum in Tahsi, northern Taoyuan county. She also said one of the leader's sons, Chiang Ching-kuo, should be buried in the mainland, too.

"I think they have fully displayed their love to this land and this country. Now it's time for them to go home peacefully," said Fang, Chiang Ching-kuo's daughter-in-law and now the de facto family head.

Her remarks came hours before the independence-leaning government of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) planned to shut down Chiang Kai-shek's mausoleum and that of his son in a nearby village.

The defence ministry has said the mausoleums will shut Sunday evening and the remaining honour guards will be withdrawn, as it works to transfer supervision of the sites to the county government.

Whether the mausoleums, which have attracted hundreds of thousands of tourists each year, will reopen depends on the local government, the ministry has said.

President Chen Shui-bian defended the controversial step in an interview with a local television station a few days ago, citing budgetary and manpower shortages.

But the leading opposition Kuomintang (KMT), which the Chiangs had led, say the closure of the mausoleums was the latest effort by the government to downplay their legacy ahead of parliamentary and presidential votes next year.

In August, the government cancelled two public holidays honouring Chiang Kai-shek after removing his statues from military sites and taking his name off the international airport.

Chiang Kai-shek is remembered by some as the leader who laid the foundations of Taiwan's economic prosperity and safeguarded the island from Chinese takeover.

However, the DPP holds him responsible for a massacre on February 28, 1947, in which thousands of local people were killed by KMT troops during riots.

In 1949, Chiang Kai-shek fled to Taiwan and set up a rival government in Taipei after his KMT troops were defeated by Mao Zedong's communist forces on the Chinese mainland. He died in 1975.

His son, Chiang Ching-kuo, was president from 1978 until his death in 1988.

The KMT ruled Taiwan for 51 years until 2000, when it lost power to the DPP.