The Nationalist Party that ruled Taiwan both in martial law and guided it to democracy mostly avoided the topic of its bloody past. Democracy didn't come easy or naturally for the former authoritarian government, Lung says: "There was a slow, loosening up of the island." It took intense social pressure to push the country's first democratically elected-president, Lee Teng-hui, to form a committee to look into a massacre committed by the Nationalists in 1947 that launched the White Terror. In some ways, he was no different from all the others in the country who couldn't believe martial law was really over, says Naiteh Wu, a Taiwanese researcher and human-rights advocate: "Lee Teng-hui was still struggling with his own past at the time he became president." http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/10/12/remembering_the_white_terror?fb_action_ids=10150927541087706&fb_action_types=og.likes&fb_source=aggregation&fb_aggregation_id=246965925417366