Saying that human rights conditions in Taiwan are deteriorating and that the judicial system is biased, former premier Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) — himself an attorney — convened a group of lawyers yesterday and created an alliance to defend civil rights.
“Democracy and human rights are crucial to Taiwan’s prosperity. However, recent events have shown that such values are under attack,” Hsieh told a press conference to inaugurate the Taiwanese Attorneys’ Alliance for Human Rights.
Hsieh was referring to corruption cases against Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Yunlin County Commissioner Su Chih-fen (蘇治芬) and former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁). Su was detained for nine days before she was summoned to testify at a prosecutors’ office where she was charged. Chen, who has yet to be indicted, was detained on Wednesday.
PHOTO: LO PEI-DER, TAIPEI TIMES
“As lawyers, we support putting anyone who may have broken the law on trial, but what we’re seeing is more of a purge than a fair trial,” Hsieh said. “The difference between a purge and a regular judiciary is that in the first instance, you characterize someone as evil — through the media or by other means — before the trial has begun.”
Lin Yu-fen (林玉芬), a lawyer affiliated with the alliance, accused law-enforcement authorities of violating people’s rights and civil liberties by using excessive force and acting illegally while dispersing crowds at anti-China protests during the visit by Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林) to Taipei earlier this month.
Witness accounts and media reports have shown police officers forcefully taking away Republic of China flags from demonstrators, stopping and checking the identity of individuals who wore T-shirts manifesting Taiwan as a sovereign country and asking a music store owner to stop playing music while trying to close the store’s front door.
National Police Agency Director-General Wang Cho-chiun (王卓鈞) dismissed the accusations and said the video clips and accounts were taken out of context. He has refused to apologize.
Hsieh said further rights violations were to be expected.
“The government refuses to listen to voices from the opposition, so more people will take to the street and become victims [of police brutality],” Hsieh said. “This is why I created this alliance, to help those [potential] victims, [who could include] workers and students.”
“If we don’t make things right today, maybe my children and grandchildren, or your children and grandchildren, will be the victims tomorrow,” he said.
Kenting National Park service technician Yang Jien-fon (楊政峰) won a silver award in World Grand Prix Photography Awards Spring Season for his photograph of two male rat snakes intertwined in combat. Yang’s colleagues at Kenting National Park said he is a master of nature photography who has been held back by his job in civil service. The awards accept entries in all four seasons across six categories: architectural and urban photography, black-and-white and fine art photography, commercial and fashion photography, documentary and people photography, nature and experimental photography, and mobile photography. Awards are ranked according to scores and divided into platinum, gold and
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus yesterday said it opposes the introduction of migrant workers from India until a mechanism is in place to prevent workers from absconding. Minister of Labor Hung Sun-han (洪申翰) on Thursday told the Legislative Yuan that the first group of migrant workers from India could be introduced as early as this year, as part of a government program. The caucus’ opposition to the policy is based on the assessment that “the risk is too high,” KMT caucus secretary-general Lin Pei-hsiang (林沛祥) said. Taiwan has a serious and long-standing problem of migrant workers absconding from their contracts, indicating that
SPACE VETERAN: Kjell N. Lindgren, who helps lead NASA’s human spaceflight missions, has been on two expeditions on the ISS and has spent 311 days in space Taiwan-born US astronaut Kjell N. Lindgren is to visit Taiwan to promote technological partnerships through one of the programs organized by the US for its 250th national anniversary. Lindgren would be in Taiwan from Tuesday to Saturday next week as part of the US Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs’ US Speaker Program, organized to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) said in a statement yesterday. Lindgren plans to engage with key leaders across the nation “to advance cutting-edge technological partnerships and inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers,”
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