The government's detention of former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) is groundless, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said yesterday, calling for the immediate release of Chen, who has been incarcerated for more than 200 days on corruption charges.
DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) told a news conference that although the DPP agreed that Chen had committed acts that had “disappointed” the public — including his failure “to keep his family in line” — the court had no right to sidestep a defendant's basic right to an open, impartial and speedy trial.
Tsai said the DPP was not voicing its support for Chen's claims of innocence, but was standing up for the right of all defendants and to highlight problems with Taiwan's judicial system.
Chen has been detained at the Taipei Detention Center in Tucheng (土城), Taipei County, since Dec. 30 on charges of corruption, money laundering and embezzlement. He was first detained in November before being briefly released.
Chen's repeated appeals to end his detention have been thrown out by the court, which said he might collude with witnesses and tamper with evidence.
Tsai was one of the 10 signatories of a joint declaration issued yesterday calling on the government to implement legal reform and end Chen's detention.
“We call for an immediate end to the detention of former president Chen and for an immediate reform of the detention system, which violates human rights,” the statement read.
“Chen's long-term detention has not only impacted on the judiciary's image and credibility but caused serious social division and confrontation, which threatens Taiwan's democratic development,” it said.
Other signatories included former Academia Sinica president Lee Yuan-tseh (李遠哲) and Citizen Congress Watch chairman Ku Chung-hwa (顧忠華).
Wellington Koo (顧立雄), chairman of the Taiwan Bar Association, said that although he had resigned as Chen's lawyer last year, that did not prohibit him from speaking up for a former client facing unfair treatment.
It would be impossible for the court to hand down a fair and objective verdict if the system and process were tainted, Koo said.
Unless the government agrees to a massive overhaul of its detention policy, “the public will continue to mistrust the legal system thinking the judiciary can be manipulated and swayed. Such sentiment is a hundred times more dangerous than Chen's case,” he said.
Tsai said that DPP Secretary-General Wu Nai-jen (吳乃仁) would present the joint statement to his Presidential Office counterpart, Chan Chun-po (詹春柏), and the DPP caucus would also visit the Judicial Yuan and the Ministry of Justice to discuss the issue.
Aside from launching a “one person, one letter” campaign calling on the public to voice their support for the cause, the DPP's International Affairs Department plans to write to all foreign embassies and representative offices, as well as international nongovernmental human rights organizations, to call for Chen's release.
The Executive Yuan's Human Rights Protection and Promotion Committee on Wednesday endorsed a proposal by the Ministry of Justice to reform the pre-trial detention system.
The ministry said that prolonged detention of suspects stems from a regulation in the Code of Criminal Procedure (刑事訴訟法) that does not set a maximum limit on the duration of detention for suspects in crimes that would entail a sentence of 10 years or more.
Prolonged detention, however, could cause a lawsuit to drag on for years, which goes against the basic principle governing legal procedure, the ministry said in the proposal.
“There wasn't much deliberation about the proposal, as it was listed as a reporting item and not a discussion item, but the direction in reform of the detention system was approved,” Research, Development and Evaluation Commission Minister Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) said.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY SHIH HSIU-CHUAN AND AFP
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