TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — With a letter of intent (LOI) inked in Berlin on Thursday (Dec. 12), Taiwan and Germany are looking to expand their collaboration to promote transitional justice.

In addition to economic, educational, and cultural affairs, the relationship between Taiwan and Germany would be taken to another level with this “meaningful cooperation” on transitional justice, said Shieh Jhy-Wey (謝志偉), Taiwan’s representative to Germany, via Facebook.

The LOI was signed by Shieh and Thomas Prinz, Germany’s representative to Taiwan, at the Stasi Records Agency (SRA), which manages the archives of the Stasi, a secret police agency of the East German communist government that operated until the regime’s dissolution in 1990.

According to Shieh, Roland Jahn, a former East German dissident and the SRA’s current federal commissioner, and parliamentarians Klaus-Peter Willsch and Katrin Budde attended the signing ceremony to show their support. He added that exchanges between the two countries on promoting transitional justice could date back to 2016, when Minister of Culture Cheng Li-chun (鄭麗君) visited the SRA and met with Jahn, who later also paid a visit to Taiwan.