The Taipei District Court has formally charged former Air Force Command serviceman Hsu Jung-chou (許榮洲) with sexually abusing and murdering a five year-old girl in 1996. The court also acknowledged that the conviction and execution of Chiang Kuo-ching (江國慶), another air force serviceman, in 1997 for the crime was wrongful and the result of an inappropriately obtained confession.
Although the statute of limitations for the use of torture to obtain a confession has expired, prosecutors named and directly criticized former minister of national defense Chen Chao-min (陳肇敏), who at the time served as chief of Air Force Command.
Prosecutors said it had been inappropriate for Chen to disregard the fact that military prosecutors were handling the criminal investigation and for him to instruct the counterintelligence unit, which does not have the power to enforce military law like the military police, to take over because he wanted a speedy resolution of the case.
Air Force Command allowed the counterintelligence unit, which lacks expertise in military law, 37 hours to extract a “confession” from Chiang under torture. The military judicial authorities sentenced Chiang to death based on that confession.
They also deliberately overlooked the confession of Hsu, who was also involved in other cases and is now the main suspect, and failed to thoroughly investigate a bloody palm print, thus leading to Chiang’s wrongful execution.
Such misjudgement of the pertinence of evidence and laxity in allowing the counterintelligence unit, which lacks judicial powers, to interfere with the investigation show how difficult it has become for the military judicial system to issue independent verdicts because the system is subordinated to the unit’s leader, whose orders override legal expertise as if he were a warlord.
Although the Ministry of National Defense and the different branches of the military have set up military personnel rights committees, these committees are mainly composed of incumbent or retired military personnel.
The small number of non--military members don’t make much of a difference, and the committees are of limited use.
This has given rise to criticism that with the military acting both as player and referee, it would only seek to protect its own and would be unlikely to put much effort into solving problems such as those posed by the Chiang case.
The military is like a microcosm of society at large. The difference is that the military requires strict discipline and training so that in times of war it can be a legitimate organization of violence capable of fighting the enemy and protecting the country.
However, because the military is made up of many people who are largely removed from society, it is difficult to completely eliminate inappropriate discipline and human rights violations. Such incidents have been widely reported in the media in recent years.
This has hurt the image of the military, but at the same time it has spurred the government and the opposition to pay more attention to rights issues in the military.
These problems are not limited to inappropriate discipline or older soldiers bullying younger ones, but also include conflict over religion, ideas and gender issues. Even if beating Chiang into confessing and sentencing him to death were an isolated incident, the underlying causes that allowed this to happen must be thoroughly rooted out if we are to prevent similar incidents. If we don’t, Taiwan can no longer claim to be a nation built on human rights, despite the passage of laws on protecting human rights and the government bragging about how Taiwan is living up to the standards of the UN’s human rights conventions.
Aside from assigning responsibility for the oversight that led to Chiang’s wrongful execution, the government should act to safeguard human rights in the military by showing some decisiveness, in addition to amending the law so that Control Yuan members can intervene if they perceive a major oversight in an ongoing investigation, come up with a cross-ministerial plan and introduce comprehensive complementary measures.
The premise for this must be to avoid overshooting the mark, which could affect normal military discipline and training and have a negative impact on officers’ morale.
The ministry should review the functions of the counterintelligence unit, consider whether it should continue to exist, and restructure and integrate its inspection and monitoring mechanisms.
In addition, although the scope of the military’s jurisdiction has shrunk, the ministry still needs to discuss restricting military law during times of peace so that military personnel can enjoy the same human rights protection and legal rights under civil law that other citizens do.
Officers are the backbone of troop discipline, but their training is overly focused on fighting skills and ignores leadership training and expertise. If the officer system is not sound and fails to promote strict but fair discipline and training, these problems will continue to pop up.
It will be even more difficult to put an end to these problems when an all-volunteer army takes over.
It is time to once again discuss the structure of the officer system and to strengthen officers’ training and expertise in leadership and psychological counseling.
On Dec. 10 last year, the Presidential Office set up the Presidential Office Human Rights Consultative Committee. The Cabinet has also established a team for human rights protection, while the Control Yuan has a human rights protection committee.
If these mechanisms and functions could find their way into the military, that would help guarantee the protection of human rights in the military.
Shu Chin-chiang is a former member of the National Security Council’s advisory committee.
TRANSLATED BY PERRY SVENSSON
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