Judicial Yuan President Lai Hau-min (賴浩敏) yesterday said the nation’s civilian judges are fully capable and ready to handle any military judicial cases that may be transferred to the civil judiciary after an amendment to the Code of Court Martial Procedure (軍事審判法) was approved.
Lai’s remarks in the Yilan District Court yesterday morning came after an amendment to the Code of Court Martial Procedure was passed by the legislature last week, under which military prosecutions and trials during peacetime are due to be transferred to the jurisdiction of the civil judiciary.
Yilan District Court President Liu Shou-sung (劉壽嵩) said the district court plans to have male judges preside over military cases for the first year, allowing time for female judges to gain knowledge of the workings of the military.
In other developments, ex-convict and debt collector Tung Nien-tai (董念台) yesterday filed a lawsuit for “psychological abuse” against Chang You-hua (張友驊), a frequent guest on political talk shows, saying that Chang had made groundless accusations against military personnel allegedly involved in the death of army corporal Hung Chung-chiu (洪仲丘), adding that their families could not live with his alleged mental abuse.
Tung said a family member of a military serviceman indicted over the Hung case wrote to him, saying: “The family has been nervous every day because they do not know what fabricated accusations Chang would make on political talks shows at night.”
Tung did not say which family had made the complaint.
This was the third lawsuit filed by Tung in the space of a week.
He first filed a lawsuit against members of activist group Citizen 1985 and Hung Tzu-yung (洪慈庸), the sister of Hung Chung-chiu, saying they forced the legislature to amend the Code of Court Martial Procedure and violated the Organized Crime Prevention Act (組織犯罪條例).
Tung also accused Citizen 1985 of fraud, claiming that the group had illegally raised funds as an non-certified organization.
The group organized a mass rally on Aug. 3 at which an estimated 200,000 people protested against what they said was the military’s poor handling of the investigation into Hung Chung-chiu’s death.
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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