Taiwanese president Ma Ying-jeou at the weekend apologised to the family of a general who was held under house arrest on false charges for 33 years, reports said Sunday. Sun Li-jen was a senior general in the Kuomintang during the Chinese civil war, with his achievements earning him the nickname "Rommel of the East".
He moved to Taiwan in 1949 at the end of a civil war after the Nationalist troops were crashed by Mao Zedong's Communist forces. But in 1955 he was put under house arrest on fabricated accusations that he was plotting a coup with America's CIA against then president Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang government.
Sun was not exonerated until 1988, two years before his death, making him one of the most noted victims of the rule of Chiang and his son Chiang Ching-kuo.