The 1987 Lieyu massacre occurred on 7 March 1987 at Donggang Bay, Lieyu Island ("Lesser Kinmen" or "Little Quemoy"), Kinmen, Fuchien, Republic of China (ROC) when soldiers from the ROC Army's 158 Heavy Infantry Division killed 24 Vietnamese refugees on the shoreline of Donggang Bay, including eight children (one baby), five women (one pregnant) and eleven men. The ROC military officially denied the massacre and defined it as an incident of "accidental manslaughter" (), hence referring to it as the March 7 Incident () or Donggang Incident ().
Despite the ROC's attempts to cover-up the incident, the massacre sparked political outrage, and partially contributed to the end of the 38-year long period of martial law; it had been in place since the Kuomintang's exodus from mainland China in May 1949. The case remains under investigation.
Background
The entire Kinmen Archipelago, a group of about twenty islands and islets, were still considered a war zone at the time and were under martial law. The Kinmen Defense Command (, or KDC), a field army of the Republic of China (ROC) Army, controlled the islands in an effort to prevent an attack by the People's Liberation Army after the ROC had ended its attempt to retake mainland China by force in 1970. On 18 December 1978, Deng Xiaoping announced the reform and opening up policy, followed by the establishment of 4 special economic zones. The international port of Xiamen was expanded for commercial traffic on 7 October 1980.
The KDC Commander, General , was promoted to director of the National Security Bureau in Taipei on 15 December, and General assumed the command.Chao Wan-fu, Chinese Encyclopedia 《Chao Wan-fu》, quoting the official archive of Nanhua County, Yunnan, 26 April 2010 In the following spring, Chao instructed the 158 Division Commander, Major-general Gong Li () to construct two propaganda walls—one 3.2m high and 20m long on Dadan Island, and the other on Erdan Island—with slogans proclaiming "Three Principles of the People Unify China" shining with neon lights at night until July 1995. Completed in August 1986, the walls faced the international seaway of Xiamen Bay, where Xi Jinping (later CCP general secretary) was the Deputy Mayor of Xiamen City.
Refugees Following the Vietnam War (1955–1975), the Cambodian–Vietnamese War (1978–1979), and the Sino-Vietnamese War (1979), many Indochinese refugees fled abroad. They often had to move several times as local authorities rejected those displaced by the crisis. The Penghu Defense Command ( or PDC) cooperated with the "Hai-piao Project" () (an arrangement of the Overseas Community Affairs Council and the Chinese Association for Relief and Ensuing Services) to transport 2,098 refugees in 45 boats and the "Ren-de Project" () to relocate another 6,497 refugees by air. In total, over 12,500 people were rescued starting in 1975.
On 1 April 1982, the Executive Yuan issued the "Pingjing Project" (), a procedure instructing the Ministry of National Defense (MND) to return the refugees. The MND updated its standard operating procedure in 1985 but did not actually enforce the new guidance. Instead, the actual practice in the frontline was to kill detainees if a purge failed. They would either bury corpses perfunctorily on the beach or let the tides pull the bodies into the sea. The MND were well aware of the practice, but turned a blind eye. They forged ahead with purposeful "refugee warfare" which endangered national security.
Incidents In January 1985, a local Chinese sampan with eight fishermen suffered engine failure and floated ashore at Shi Islet, part of the 473 Brigade's defense region. When the platoon stationed there contacted the KDC for instructions, they were ordered to kill the stranded fishermen. Six died under crossfire but two escaped to a rock cave, kneeling down to beg for mercy. When discovered, those two were pushed off the rock cliff to fall to their death after the KDC reiterated the order to kill the entire crew. A subsequent search of the sampan found only a letter drafted by one of the sailors, a son telling his mother that he had collected sufficient yarn for her to knit a sweater for winter.
In April 1986, an incident occurred where a young couple, both teachers, swam from Xiamen to Dadan Island seeking asylum. The commander of the Dadan Defense Team (), Premier Deputy Division Commander of the 158 Lieyu Division () Colonel Chien Yi-hu (), received the couple and escorted them to the KDC headquarters on the main island of Kinmen. Chien was immediately relieved of his post for violating the directive to "accept no surrender in the war zone".
In mid-July 1986, General Chao inspected the outlying islets of Lieyu, and noticed that the amphibious reconnaissance battalion (ARB-101, ) took in an unknown person swimming near Dadan after the local garrison failed to expel him away. Chao was furious, condemning the ARB leader, and left in anger; the Dadan commander then called all the units to announce the kill-them-all policy to prevent anybody arriving onshore. The neighboring Erdan Island commander (), Deputy Brigade Commander of the 473 Brigade lieutenant colonel Zhong—who had executed 7 stranded fishermen in 1983 and relayed the KDC's order for the aforementioned killings at Shi Islet—also summoned all the soldiers to reiterate the order: "Whoever lands on the island must be executed without exception." Soon after, he was promoted to the position of 472 Nantang Brigade Commander () and took charge of all the units in the South Lieyu Defense Team ().
Nuclear weapons program
Both the KDC and the Matsu Defense Command (, or MDC) guarded nuclear artillery strike plans targeting neighboring regions during the Cold War. These targeted regions included the strategic Xiamen City, even though the affected radius also covered the ROC's own stationed Dadan and Erdan Islands. It is alleged that a previous nuclear weapons program undertaken since 1967 was forced to stop in 1977 under the pressure of United States and IAEA, but was followed by another hidden agenda. In 1986, after nearly 20 years of research and simulation testing, a successful minimized nuclear test at the Jioupeng military field in Pingtung was recorded by US satellite imagery; later, in 1988, it was questioned by the director of American Institute in Taiwan, David Dean, according to the diary of Superior-general Hau Pei-tsun.
The development of the nuclear weapons program was eventually exposed by Colonel Chang Hsien-yi, deputy director of the Institute of Nuclear Energy Research at the National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology, who defected to the United States in January 1988. A ROC military agent traced Chang's child after school to locate their home in Washington, D.C. until finally violated the federal witness protection program, further leading to the confrontation of Director Dean with General Hau.
Massacre
On 6 March 1987, a boat of Vietnamese refugees who had been rejected in Hong Kong arrived in Kinmen to request political asylum. However, General Chao rejected the demand, and ordered an ARB-101 patrol boat to tow away the boat from the shore on the morning of 7 March, with a warning not to return. However, for reasons unclear, information about the boat's presence in the Southern Sea was never forwarded to the front line of the coastal defense units, including those on Lieyu Island.
As a seasonal heavy fog appeared on the coast and gradually turned clear in the afternoon, the Vietnamese boat was sighted by an infantry post off the south shore of Lieyu at 16:37, where it had been too close and too late to apply for the indirect fire support by artillery intervention. The local 1st Dashanding Infantry Battalion () Commander, Major Liu Yu; the 472 Brigade Commander, Colonel Zhong; and the 158 Division G3 Chief Operation Officer (), Colonel Han Jing-yue (), arrived at the scene with staff officers. The 629 Light Artillery Battalion—which happened to be taking a field drill practice in the ancient airport on the northeastern beachfront—launched a single star shell which lit up the background horizon sky, but found no invasion force approaching. Meanwhile, warning shots followed by expelling shots were fired in sequence as per the procedure steps in the rules of engagement, using T57 rifles, .30 caliber, and .50 caliber machine guns in short range by the 3rd Company and the reserve platoons of three companies while another one was coming in, totaling over 200 infantrymen.
The Vietnamese boat was stranded on the sand beach southwest of Donggang () Fishery Port (Fort L-05), a sensitive strategic point in front of the mobile positions of M40 recoilless rifles and M30 mortars. Nearby was the communication transit station nicknamed "04" (a homonym of 'You die' in Chinese pronunciation) on a hill with a 30°-angle blind corner on radar screens caused by the steep hillside. This hillside lay in front of the classified 240 mm howitzer M1 ("Black Dragon" or "Nuclear Cannon") railway gun positions of Kinmen Defense Command, and the 155/105 mm artillery battalions of 158 Division. As such, the foreign boat's landing location on the beach beneath aroused significant concern. The boat was hit by crossfire from L-05, L-06, and Fort Fuxing Islet of the 2nd Battalion, plus two M72 LAW (light anti-tank weapon) rounds by the WPN Company in reinforcement. Armor-piercing shells penetrated through the sky-blue wooden hull without detonation. Three unarmed Vietnamese left the boat, raised their hands, and pled in Chinese, "Don't shoot...!" but were all shot dead.
The local 3rd Dongang Company () Commander, Lieutenant Chang, received the order from the brigade commander to dispatch a search team to board the boat. Two hand grenades were thrown into the boat before the search team found that all the passengers were Vietnamese refugees with no weapons on board. The passengers said that the vessel had experienced a mechanical failure. Because of the heavy fog, the strong seasonal currents and the rising tide since late afternoon, the boat drifted into the open bay. The surviving passengers and the bodies of the dead were taken out of the boat and placed on the beach, with neither first aid nor any life support supply rendered. Following intense telecommunication with the Division Headquarters, the commanders at the scene received orders from their superiors—alleged directly by Commander General Chao—to kill the passengers to eliminate all the eyewitnesses. Some refugees received multiple shots when the first bullet did not kill them. Among the bodies piled were elderly people, men, women, one pregnant woman, children, and a baby in a sweater.
The following identification evidence was collected at the scene, and enlisted through the P4 (Internal Security) channel of the Political Warfare Department, the KDC, and the MND Army Commands HQ:
one "Declaration of no possession lost/damaged on boat" issued by the Director of Immigration Office of Hong Kong Alan Carter on 12 December 1986 four copies of the "Notification on the voluntary alternative options to stay under indefinite custody or the assistance to continue navigation" by the British Hong Kong Government on 12 January 1987 several personal ID documents from the French Indochina government two kerosene barrels printed in English with "Singapore" on surface several Singaporean magazines and Hong Kong newspapers a notebook written in English with the last entry on 6 March
For unknown reasons, none of this evidence was later adopted by either the prosecutor or the judge, hence all the court documents named the victims only as the "unknown people" ().