Groups campaigning for judicial reform yesterday protested their exclusion from “public hearings” on a bill to ensure the right to a speedy trial.
Taiwan has a number of criminal cases that have bounced back and forth between the supreme and high courts for years. In one case, three former senior managers at a bank went through repeated trials for three decades before the verdict was finalized. The three were found innocent.
Amid heavy criticism over such cases from legal experts and activists pushing for judicial reform, the Judicial Yuan is drafting a bill intended to speed up criminal cases.
The bill includes measures such as increasing the number of assistants for judges and restricting prosecutors’ right to appeal under certain circumstances.
The Judicial Yuan arranged a series of public hearings in Taipei, Taichung, Tainan, Kaohsiung and Hualien to review the content of the bill, but only invited judges, prosecutors, lawyers and law professors, excluding representatives from several civic groups actively working with the issue, the groups said in a statement.
The groups include the Taiwan Association for Human Rights (TAHR), Green Party Taiwan, the National Union of Taiwan Women’s Associations, the Taiwan Labor Front, Amnesty International Taiwan, Wild at Heart Legal Defense Association, the Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty and the Humanistic Education Foundation.
“These ‘public hearings’ are neither open to the public nor aimed at listening to the public,” the statement said.
“We are groups that specialize in judicial matters. We have all handled legal cases involving human rights abuses in various fields,” the statement said. “We may be better representatives of the people involved in these cases than legal professionals.”
TAHR secretary-general Tsai Chih-hsun (蔡季勳) said her organization had been working closely with the defendants in the Hsichih Trio case, in which three men spent years on death row despite a lack of forensic evidence linking them to two murders in Sijhih (汐止), Taipei County, in 1991. The case was reopened and the men acquitted in 2003. However, the ruling was not final and the case is continuing after 10 trials.
“We know what they’re thinking and know the suffering they’ve been through,” Tsai said.
“The Judicial Yuan should have invited these victims of the judiciary to attend the hearings or they should at least have consulted the groups who have been working closely with such victims,” she said.
The Hsichih Trio — Liu Bing-lang (劉秉郎), Su Chien-ho (蘇建和) and Chuang Lin-hsun (莊林勳) — have been allowed to return home while their trial continues and Su began working at TAHR after his release.
Tsai said that the Judicial Yuan had drafted the bill in response to the public’s calls and “should not work [on it] behind closed doors ... We often have to wait until a bill is submitted to the Legislative Yuan for review to know what exactly is in it.”
Judicial Yuan official Lee Wen-fu (李文福) said yesterday that it was not the best time to involve the public in the process because the bill was still being drafted.
“We’re not even sure what direction we’re heading in yet and we can’t really discuss with the public a plan that doesn’t exist,” he said.
Actor Darren Wang (王大陸) was sentenced to six months in prison, commutable to a fine, by the New Taipei District Court today for contravening the Personal Data Protection Act (個人資料保護法) in a case linked to an alleged draft-dodging scheme. Wang allegedly paid NT$3.6 million (US$114,380) to an illegal group to help him evade mandatory military service through falsified medical documents, prosecutors said. He transferred the funds to Chen Chih-ming (陳志明), the alleged mastermind of a draft-evasion ring, although he lost contact with him as he was already in detention on fraud charges, they said. Chen is accused of helping a
SECURITY: Starlink owner Elon Musk has taken pro-Beijing positions, and allowing pro-China companies to control Taiwan’s critical infrastructure is risky, a legislator said Starlink was reluctant to offer services in Taiwan because of the nation’s extremely high penetration rates in 4G and 5G services, the Ministry of Digital Affairs said yesterday. The ministry made the comments at a meeting of the legislature’s Transportation Committee, which reviewed amendments to Article 36 of the Telecommunications Management Act (電信管理法). Article 36 bans foreigners from holding more than 49 percent of shares in public telecommunications networks, while shares foreigners directly and indirectly hold are also capped at 60 percent of the total, unless specified otherwise by law. The amendments, sponsored by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Ko
UNREASONABLE SURVEILLANCE: A camera targeted on an road by a neighbor captured a man’s habitual unsignaled turn into home, netting him dozens of tickets The Taichung High Administrative Court has canceled all 45 tickets given to a man for failing to use a turn signal while driving, as it considered long-term surveillance of his privacy more problematic than the traffic violations. The man, surnamed Tseng (曾), lives in Changhua County and was reported 45 times within a month for failing to signal while driving when he turned into the alley where his residence is. The reports were filed by his neighbor, who set up security cameras that constantly monitored not only the alley but also the door and yard of Tseng’s house. The surveillance occurred from July
‘SAME OLD TRICK’: Even if Beijing resumes individual travel to Taiwan, it would only benefit Chinese tourism companies, the Economic Democracy Union convener said China’s 10 new “incentives” are “sugar-coated poison,” an official said yesterday, adding that Taiwanese businesses see them clearly for what they are, but that Beijing would inevitably find some local collaborators to try to drums up support. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, made the remark ahead of a news conference the General Chamber of Commerce is to hold today. The event, titled “Industry Perspectives on China’s Recent Pro-Taiwan Policies,” is expected to include representatives from industry associations — such as those in travel, hotels, food and agriculture — to request the government cooperate with China’s new measures, people familiar with
RSS