In the old Jingmei military detention complex in southern Taipei, the National Human Rights Museum is the country's principal memorial to the White Terror — the long Kuomintang dictatorship from 1949 to 1987 during which thousands of dissidents were imprisoned, tortured and executed. The museum preserves the cellblocks, courtrooms, and exercise yards largely as they were.
The exhibits are confronting and well-presented — political pamphlets, prison letters, oral testimonies, recreated cells of famous detainees including the writer Bo Yang and the future president Annette Lu. Free entry. Allow at least two hours; the experience is somber but essential to understanding modern Taiwan. A second branch on Green Island, off the southeast coast, preserves the worst of the long-term prison camps.