Renowned physician, author and White Terror victim dies at 96

Taipei, Sept. 30 (CNA) Yen Shih-hung (顏世鴻), a renowned Taiwanese physician, author and victim during the White Terror period in Taiwan, has died at the age of 96.

The news of Yan's death was confirmed Monday by his niece, an author known by the penname Mi Kuo (米果), who said her uncle passed away peacefully on Sept. 27.

The White Terror period refers to a period of political repression in Taiwan by the-then Kuomintang government from 1949-1987.

According to the National Human Rights Museum website, Yen was born in October 1927 in Kaohsiung. At the age of three his family moved to Fujian in China, only returning to Taiwan after the Marco Polo Bridge incident in July 1937.

After the end of World War II, Yen studied at National Taiwan University's (NTU) College of Medicine and in 1950 at the introduction of schoolmate Yeh Sheng-chi (葉盛吉) joined the Communist Party in Taiwan, which at the time was governed by the KMT under Martial Law.

Due to this and another related case, Yen was sentenced to 12 years in jail and in May 1951 began serving his sentence on Green Island where he remained until 1962.

After his release, Yen retook his medical studies at Taipei Medical School in 1964 as he was unable to continue where he left off at National Taiwan University due to his criminal record. He subsequently graduated and began working as a physician at a hospital in Tainan in 1968.

In 2012, he published an autobiography titled "No. 3, Qingdao East Road: My Hundred-Year Memories and Taiwan's Outrageous Era" (青島東路三號:我的百年之憶及台灣的荒謬年代).

The book was named after the address of a military detention facility in Taipei where Yen was held before his trial.

Hsieh Chi-chang (謝奇璋), a physician at National Cheng Kung University Hospital who knew Yen described him as a passionate man who always took care of his patients.

In a Facebook post, Hsieh wrote that Yen never charged his patients high fees if he knew they were having financial difficulties.

"Thank you, Dr. Yen, for demonstrating how an intellectual should persevere," he said, while praising him for setting an inspirational example.