The Northern Taiwan Society spoke out yesterday in support of Cabinet Spokesman Shieh Jhy-wey's (
"Back in the White Terror era, more than 90 percent of the judges and prosecutors were members of the Chinese Nationalist Party [KMT], which was ridiculous," Chin Heng-wei (金恆煒), vice chairman of the society, said at a press conference in Taipei.
Under the KMT regime, the judiciary was controlled by the KMT, he said. As the Democratic Progressive Party government is now seeking transitional justice, it is natural for the government to ask judges and prosecutors to remain neutral, he said.
"In the US, judges must reveal their party affiliations. I do not understand why judges in Taiwan would fear such a request," he said.
Constitution Reform Alliance convener Allen Houng (
"Everybody knows that there are more `biased' cases in the military," Hung said. "Military judicial personnel should contribute to the transitional justice effort as well, as the government seeks to build an independent justice system."
The director-general of the Judicial Reform Foundation, Lin Feng-jeng (林峰正), said it was normal for judges or prosecutors to become a member of a party during the authoritarian era, but it was important to determine whether they did so voluntarily or upon demands from their superiors.
"In the White Terror era, a qualified judge or a prosecutor would not have been able to work if he or she did not join the KMT. These people may be innocent," Lin said. "All we are asking for now is that our judiciary stay completely neutral."
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
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