The 2-28 Incident (Chinese: 二二八事件; Pinyin: Èrèrbā shìjiàn), also known as the February 28 Massacre (Chinese: 二二八大屠殺; Èrèrbā dà túshā) refers to the violent islandwide unrests beginning on February 28, 1947, and their brutal aftermath.
The events were sparked by the arrest of a woman illegally selling cigarettes, a government monopoly at the time, in Taipei on the 27th of February 1947. The woman resisted, and small crowd gathered to confront the police officers, which led to one of the policemen firing his gun into the crowd, killing a bystander. The next day, people gathered in front of government buildings, such as the Monopoly Bureau Headquarters to protest the events of the previous day and express general disapproval of Nationalist rule, but the events grew more violent as time moved on. Two Monopoly Commission agents were killed and ROC authorities were eventually rendered unable to function. The administration temporarily declared martial law on the 28th.
The newly de facto leaders of Taiwan, who came to be known as the February 28 Incident Settlement committee, promptly began negotiating with Governor Chen Yi to resolve the crisis. On the 7th of March they confronted the administration with what came to be known as the Thirty-two Demands, which included ending military rule, more inclusive governance, better economic policy and granting greater autonomy to Taiwan as a province. Chen had asked for and received reinforcements from the Mainland, who landed on the 8th-10th of March at Keelung and Kaohsiung and restoring order by force by the 13th through a process of indiscriminately shooting everyone on the streets.
It is difficult to precisely estimate the number of casualties, as the bulk of subsequent crackdowns were carried out in secret. Estimates range from the extremes of a few hundred to a few hundred thousand, but the KMT's records suggest the casualties to have been above 28,000.1
