00:04In sharp contrast to the upbeat music that filled the spring morning,
00:09thick black smoke billows from the third floor of this Taipei building.
00:14The blazing window looks right into the office of the magazine Freedom Era Weekly,
00:19whose editor-in-chief, Zhen Nanrong, died in an act of self-immolation
00:24when police came to arrest him for sedition.
00:27The day was April 7, 1989.
00:31Chiu Anxin's pager rained that morning.
00:34He was the first photographer to document the event that would change the face of Taiwan.
00:39And the memories still haunt him to this day.
01:05Chen Nanrong, who also went by the name Nailong Chen,
01:08was wanted for publishing texts supporting Taiwan independence,
01:12challenging the then ruling Kuomintang government,
01:15which had continued to follow its party mission to reclaim China
01:18and criminalized opposition to its one-party rule,
01:21even in 1987, after it had ended more than three decades of martial law.
01:28Zhen registered over 20 publishing licenses to get around government bans on his magazine
01:33and took full responsibility for what he published.
01:37Before the fateful day of his death,
01:39he had locked himself in his office for 71 days to avoid surveillance.
01:57For over two months,
01:59Zhen continued to work and live his day-to-day life inside this room,
02:03taking his own life right before police could break down the door and capture him.
02:08Over there on the floor is where police found Chen Nanrong's charred body,
02:11and this room has been kept exactly as it was that day,
02:14with what remains of the furniture still in place.
02:17In a year since his death,
02:20there have been various views about Zhen Nanrong and his legacy.
02:23Many hailed him as a martyr for free speech,
02:27though some disapprove of the extreme manner he chose to take his own life.
02:31His youngest brother, Zhen Qinghua,
02:33remembers him as a headstrong workaholic
02:35who refused to give up on his self-lockdown,
02:38even on a holiday.
03:03Zhen Qinghua said not even his parents could sway his brother's determination.
03:08Still, they supported him all the way,
03:10even though it could mean losing him forever.
03:12Even then, in the past,
03:15I interviewed a father and a father.
03:20At that live, I wasn't really for Chen Nanrong'
03:23but I saw a father.
03:25Then I fell down.
03:27How do you say?
03:28In the mirror,
03:29my father and mother would help him talk about his children.
03:32It was difficult to attend.
03:45Chen's death sent shockwaves through the country.
03:49Tens of thousands of mourners took to the streets of Taipei on the day of his funeral.
03:54People saw that freedom didn't automatically come with the end of martial law.
03:59Authoritarian rules were still in place, and surveillance hadn't stopped.
04:03Tens of thousands of mourners took to the streets of Taipei on the day of his funeral.
04:31But demonstrations erupted all over, culminating in the end of persecuting dissent
04:36and the release of all remaining political prisoners in 1992.
05:00Today, the street where Chen Nanrou's former office stands has adopted the name Liberty Lane,
05:06and the Freedom Era Weekly office is now a museum.
05:09These spaces serve to remind people of Taiwan's heart-worn fight for democracy
05:13and to ensure that history never repeats itself.
05:17Joseph Wu, John Su, and Irene Lin in Taipei for Taiwan Plus.
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