Chen Chu
Kaohsiung Incident Prisoner & Human-Rights Advocate
Democratic Transition
1950–
Chen Chu, born in 1950 into a farming family in Yilan, is among the most representative women in Taiwan's democracy movement. In her youth she served as secretary to the tangwai elder Kuo Yu-hsin, whose influence drew her into the opposition movement and the work of aiding political prisoners. In the 1970s she actively connected tangwai figures and championed human-rights issues, one of the few women active on the front line at the time. When the Kaohsiung Incident broke out in 1979, she was the youngest woman among those indicted and was sentenced to twelve years in a military trial. She spent several years in prison, was released around 1986, and continued her work for democracy and human rights afterward. After the lifting of martial law she held senior posts in the Democratic Progressive Party and government, including labor-affairs chief in Taipei and at the central level, long attentive to labor and disadvantaged groups. From 2006 she was elected and re-elected mayor of Kaohsiung, serving twelve years and driving the city's modernization and transformation. She then became secretary-general to the president and, in 2020, president of the Control Yuan and first chair of the National Human Rights Commission, returning to the roots of her human-rights activism. Her life spans resistance under authoritarianism and governance after democratization, witnessing and shaping Taiwan's overall political transition. Chen is regarded as a symbolic figure of women's political participation and the human-rights movement, her path from political prisoner to local chief executive to head of a national human-rights body a telling microcosm of Taiwan's democratization.
Imprisoned over the Kaohsiung Incident (1979)
Long-serving mayor of Kaohsiung, later president of the Control Yuan
Kaohsiung Incident Prisoner & Human-Rights Advocate
Chen Chu
Era
Democratic Transition
Lifespan
1950–
Chen Chu, born in 1950 into a farming family in Yilan, is among the most representative women in Taiwan's democracy movement. In her youth she served as secretary to the tangwai elder Kuo Yu-hsin, whose influence drew her into the opposition movement and the work of aiding political prisoners. In the 1970s she actively connected tangwai figures and championed human-rights issues, one of the few women active on the front line at the time. When the Kaohsiung Incident broke out in 1979, she was the youngest woman among those indicted and was sentenced to twelve years in a military trial. She spent several years in prison, was released around 1986, and continued her work for democracy and human rights afterward. After the lifting of martial law she held senior posts in the Democratic Progressive Party and government, including labor-affairs chief in Taipei and at the central level, long attentive to labor and disadvantaged groups. From 2006 she was elected and re-elected mayor of Kaohsiung, serving twelve years and driving the city's modernization and transformation. She then became secretary-general to the president and, in 2020, president of the Control Yuan and first chair of the National Human Rights Commission, returning to the roots of her human-rights activism. Her life spans resistance under authoritarianism and governance after democratization, witnessing and shaping Taiwan's overall political transition. Chen is regarded as a symbolic figure of women's political participation and the human-rights movement, her path from political prisoner to local chief executive to head of a national human-rights body a telling microcosm of Taiwan's democratization.
Imprisoned over the Kaohsiung Incident (1979)
Long-serving mayor of Kaohsiung, later president of the Control Yuan