Many of the 34 academics who signed an open letter to President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) questioning his administration’s decision to investigate former senior Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) officials over 36,000 supposedly missing government documents are far from satisfied or reassured by the government’s response.
Presidential Office spokesman Lo Chih-chiang (羅智強) denied in a letter received by the academics this week that the investigation was politically motivated, even though it was announced on the eve of former premier Su Tseng-chang’s (蘇貞昌) registration for the DPP’s primaries for next year’s presidential election.
Su is one of the 17 people being investigated.
“I am surprised at the sharp response of the Ma administration, which seems disproportionate to the letter itself,” June Teufel Dreyer of the University of Miami said. “I daresay that few of the signers find spokesperson Lo’s explanation convincing.”
Dreyer said the signatories had also heard “disquieting comments” from Lo and others alleging that the letter was originally written in Chinese (“it was originally written in English”) and that the signatories were ignorant of Taiwan.
“Really, some of us have lived there for decades; others visit regularly, read Taiwan newspapers and watch Taiwan television. Some were born in Taiwan; one carries a Taiwan/ROC passport. How then can we be considered ignorant? One must wonder how many documents were lost in the 2000 presidential transition,” she said.
Author Gordon Chang (章家敦), another of those who signed the open letter, said: “The case of the 36,000 missing documents is a whodunit without a crime, at least no crime involving the documents in question. But of course there is one crime in this drama. And what is that? That is the willingness of President Ma’s administration to use its investigatory powers to influence the upcoming elections. That crime is real, shameful and corrosive of democracy.”
“We sent the letter because someone had to speak out. The assertion that we are ‘foreigners’ who should mind our own business is regrettably the same one Beijing makes whenever someone points out the obvious about human rights in China. This is a perfect time to call a ‘time out’ on Ma’s march back to authoritarianism,” he said.
And Stephen Yates, former deputy assistant for national security affairs to former US vice president Dick Cheney, said: “News of the recent government action against several of the most senior officials in the previous administration struck many of us as unusual and questionable. It appeared to be part of a troubling pattern of expansive, lengthy and repeated investigations, indictments and trials of former administration officials. Much of which amounts to a criminalization of politics and an erosion of justice.”
“Senior elected and appointed officials in any government are not responsible for document management. And the fact that two-and-a-half years passed before this issue was referred to the Control Yuan for investigation also is inconsistent with any notion of real national security or law enforcement concern,” Yates said.
John Tkacik, a former senior research fellow with the Heritage Foundation, said: “Supposedly these documents are circulating outside the Presidential Office. Why weren’t there any examples given? Surely, the Presidential Office could have pointed to some of the unclassified documents that are missing and demonstrate how their circulation is injuring the public interest. That in itself is enough to make anyone suspect that the accusations are politically motivated. At this point, the 36,000 documents affair looks like deminimis non curat lex — trifles not to be handled under the law.”
DELUSIONAL: The male patient said he did not know that the woman had mental problems, but the court said that her being restrained in isolation should have given him pause The Taiwan High Court has ordered the Jhudong branch of the Taiwan National University Hospital and a male patient to jointly pay a former female patient’s family NT$400,000 in compensation after the man had sex with the woman, who has mental problems, while hospitalized. The 26-year-old woman has been diagnosed with a mental disorder, a symptom of which is that she obsessively seeks to have sex, her mother said. The mother filed a formal complaint and sought damages from the hospital and the male patient surnamed Chen (陳) after finding out that her daughter had sex with the man while
The Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA) should not use the government’s disease-prevention policy as an excuse to block people’s access to the Taipei Railway Station’s main hall, the Taiwan International Workers’ Association said yesterday. The association held a protest at the station after what organizers said were about 400 people staged a sit-in on Saturday to demonstrate against the TRA’s proposal to ban sitting on the floor of the main hall. In accordance with the Central Epidemic Command Center’s disease-prevention measures, large gatherings have been banned in the hall since the end of February. After protesters yesterday expressed their grievances at the southern
SEEKING OPTIONS: A Sinyi Realty corporate realty official attributed the spike to proposed legal changes in the territory and the ongoing pro-democracy protests More Hong Kongers purchased real estate in Taiwan last year than other foreigners, Ministry of the Interior statistics showed. The ministry attributed the spike to a proposed extradition law that the Hong Kong government submitted last year, which would have allowed suspects to be sent to China and other nations, which sparked mass protests that are continuing. The rate of purchases last year by Hong Kong natural and juridical persons stood at 40 and 60 percent respectively, with building area purchased by both standing at 47.41 percent and 52.59 percent respectively, ministry data showed. Department of Land Administration statistics showed that Hong Kongers
NEW RECRUITS: Nearly 9 million students are to graduate from university next month, and Beijing plans to use incentives to convince them to join the military, an analyst said Rising unemployment in China due to the COVID-19 pandemic could benefit the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) by allowing it to attract new, better educated recruits, a Taiwanese security researcher said on Friday. Chen Ying-hsuan (陳穎萱), a policy analyst at the Division of Chinese Politics and Military Affairs at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, a government-funded think tank, made the remarks in an article published in the Defense Security Biweekly magazine. About 8.74 million university students are expected to graduate in China next month, while Chinese companies’ demand for fresh graduates fell 16.77 percent annually in the
RSS