Former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) did not receive a fair trial and could be seen as a de facto political prisoner, a fact-finding mission sent by a Taiwanese-American organization concluded in its preliminary findings after a two-week investigation in Taiwan.
The way Chen, who is serving an 18-and-a-half-year sentence for corruption and is currently in hospital receiving medical treatment for various ailments, has been treated in prison and the way his trial was handled have not been seen even in some dictatorships, the two-member mission told the Taipei Times in an interview.
Michael Richardson and Mary Loan traveled to Taiwan to conduct a “truth-seeking” inquiry on behalf of the Formosan Association for Human Rights (FAHR). They left on Friday.
During their two-week visit, they met with Chen in his hospital room and conducted interviews with pan-green camp legislators, Chen’s attorneys, Chen’s medical team and human rights activists, Richardson said.
Richardson said a formal report will not be ready for several weeks, but that preliminary findings clearly establish three ways in which Chen did not receive a fair trial.
First, there are various structural problems with Taiwan’s justice system because having “no jury trials, politically appointed judges and the ability of prosecutors to appeal not-guilty verdicts all serve to create opportunity for judicial abuse.”
Second, a number of unusual and irregular procedural events cast serious doubt on the fairness of the former president’s trial, including the changing of judges, midnight court sessions, an after-hours skit by prosecutors mocking Chen, reportedly improper communication between the court and the prosecution and restrictions on public attendance, Richardson said.
“Third, there were classic indicators of an unfair trial: Perjured testimony, a prosecution deal and recanted testimony,” he said.
Richardson did not speak to any government officials because he thought “the government was represented by what it has done.”
While President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has reiterated that he would keep his hands off the judicial system, Richardson said his investigation clearly implicated that the trial had been politically influenced and would be deemed “unfair by any standards in the US.”
Richardson, who is from Boston, Massachusetts, and currently lives in the Central American country of Belize, said Chen’s health and his hospital environment, which “was more like a hospital cell and kept Chen largely in isolation,” were also a concern.
Recalling his first meeting with Chen in April 2010, when the former president was an inmate at the Taipei Detention Center, Richardson said Chen “was animated, very upbeat and smiled a lot.”
However, “[Chen] was a different man than [the one] I met two years ago. He was a broken man,” Richardson said, adding that Chen never smiled and made no eye contact during their one-hour meeting at Taipei Veterans General Hospital.
Neither Chen’s environment at the hospital nor the treatment he received in prison were acceptable, Richardson said.
Chen’s hospital room was “not an environment in which somebody who suffers from severe depression can heal,” he said.
In prison, “perhaps the only thing they haven’t done to him is waterboarding,” Richardson added, citing what he learned from interviews with various sources.
“If all the prisoners in Taiwan are being treated the way he’s been treated, there’s a big problem with Taiwan’s prison system,” he said.
Richardson said he had briefed officials at the American Institute in Taiwan about his findings and would submit his report to the FAHR after returning to the US.
Richardson began studying Taiwan’s history and political development six years ago. His previous field of expertise was electoral law and how people in overseas US territories, such as Puerto Rico, Guam and Samoa, obtain US citizenship.
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
BREACH OF CONTRACT: The bus operators would seek compensation and have demanded that the manufacturer replace the chips with ones that meet regulations Two bus operators found to be using buses with China-made chips are to demand that the original manufacturers replace the systems and provide compensation for breach of contract, the Veterans Affairs Council said yesterday. Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Michelle Lin (林楚茵) yesterday said that Da Nan Bus Co and Shin-Shin Bus Co Ltd have fielded a total of 82 buses that are using Chinese chips. The bus models were made by Tron-E, while the systems provider was CYE Electronics, Lin said. Lin alleged that the buses were using chips manufactured by Huawei subsidiary HiSilicon Co, which presents a national security risk if the
The National Immigration Agency has banned two Chinese from returning to Taiwan, after they published social media content it described as disrespectful to national sovereignty. The agency imposed a two-month ban on a Chinese man surnamed Liang (梁) and a permanent ban on a woman surnamed Yang (楊), an influencer with 23 million followers, in October last year and last week respectively. Minister of the Interior Liu Shyh-fang (劉世芳) yesterday said on the sidelines of a legislative meeting that Chinese visitors to Taiwan are required to comply with the rules and regulations governing their entry permits. The government has handled the ban and
RSS