A political prisoner from the White Terror era yesterday said he would launch a campaign to encourage victims convicted by military tribunals to take legal action to clear their names and demand compensation, after the Control Yuan raised questions about the legality of the Martial Law Era.
Hsieh Tsung-min (謝聰敏), a national policy adviser under the Democratic Progressive Party administration, made the remarks following the release of a Control Yuan report questioning the constitutional legitimacy of the implementation of martial law, which was imposed in 1949 and lasted 38 years.
Control Yuan members Huang Huang-hsiung (黃煌雄), Yeh Yao-peng (葉耀鵬) and Liu Hsing-shan (劉興善) made the report public at a press conference yesterday, saying the document was based on more than one year of scrutinizing all available documents kept by the government.
Liu said the KMT government proclaimed a series of martial laws three times between December 1948 and November 1949. The last, declared on Nov. 22, 1949, specifically put the entire “Taiwan area” under martial law.
Liu said the legitimacy of the order issued on Nov. 22 was questionable because it was not signed by acting president Li Zongren (李宗仁), who had taken over after Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) resigned as president on Jan. 21, 1949.
It was also unconstitutional because the order should have been ratified by the legislature within a month of its decree.
“We did not find any documents showing that the order was signed off by Li and promulgated, as Li had left Chongqing and was then in the US. If it had been promulgated, the Central Daily News [the KMT mouthpiece] would have published the news the next day, but it did not,” Liu said.
Huang said the Control Yuan published the report to shed light on that part of history, adding that it was not for the Control Yuan to decide whether martial law was implemented unconstitutionally.
“Convictions made during the era could be annulled if the imposition of martial law is ruled to have been unconstitutional and illegal,” Huang said.
“We are not sure whether the martial laws were invalid, but we think they might have been flawed, and the answer can only be given by the Constitutional Court,” Liu said.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY CNA
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
Taiwan yesterday denied Chinese allegations that its military was behind a cyberattack on a technology company in Guangzhou, after city authorities issued warrants for 20 suspects. The Guangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau earlier yesterday issued warrants for 20 people it identified as members of the Information, Communications and Electronic Force Command (ICEFCOM). The bureau alleged they were behind a May 20 cyberattack targeting the backend system of a self-service facility at the company. “ICEFCOM, under Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, directed the illegal attack,” the warrant says. The bureau placed a bounty of 10,000 yuan (US$1,392) on each of the 20 people named in
INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the
The High Court yesterday found a New Taipei City woman guilty of charges related to helping Beijing secure surrender agreements from military service members. Lee Huei-hsin (李慧馨) was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison for breaching the National Security Act (國家安全法), making illegal compacts with government employees and bribery, the court said. The verdict is final. Lee, the manager of a temple in the city’s Lujhou District (蘆洲), was accused of arranging for eight service members to make surrender pledges to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in exchange for money, the court said. The pledges, which required them to provide identification
RSS