New Power Party (NPP) Legislator Hsu Yung-ming (徐永明) yesterday said the Ministry of Justice had neglected its duty after 20 Taiwanese detained by the Malaysian government sent to Taiwan on Friday night were released on arrival.
Hsu accused the ministry of “deliberately taking zero action to collect evidence and misleading the public” into believing that fraud suspects — as Beijing had claimed — are not duly punished in Taiwan.
“Why is it that the ministry did not proactively collect evidence from Malaysian authorities from the beginning? This is not the first time that we have had this kind of case. Is ‘letting the suspects get away easily’ a reputation actually created by the ministry’s repeated passive reactions?” Hsu asked.
Malaysian authorities gave the evidence to Chinese authorities, Hsu said.
The ministry contacted its Chinese counterpart over the case, but failed to request that Chinese authorities give the required evidence to the ministry, which is a serious dereliction of duty, Hsu said.
The party caucus also said in a statement that the ministry needs to expound on whether it has asked for information and evidence from Malaysian and Chinese authorities, and if not, why.
“As a responsible member of the international community, Taiwan’s top priority is to engage in effective and substantive judicial cooperation on the condition that the country’s judicial sovereignty is respected,” the statement said.
“The recent forced deportation of Taiwanese to China, and the inability of our related authorities to obtain relevant evidence have accentuated the country’s inadequacies in international judicial cooperation and domestic law enforcement,” it added.
Separately yesterday, Executive Yuan spokesperson Sun Lih-chyun (孫立群) said Premier Simon Chang (張善政) on Friday ordered the ministry to gather the relevant information “via [its] channels” to launch an investigation, which the ministry did after it was known that the 20 Taiwanese were to be deported to Taiwan.
The Criminal Investigation Bureau had already asked Chinese authorities to provide relevant documents, Sun added.
The NPP also accused the government of failing to coordinate with China.
“We would like to ask the Ministry of Justice if it requested that Malaysia and China forward any relevant documents?” the statement said. “If it has not, why not?”
The caucus urged the judiciary to more aggressively cooperate with other nations fighting transnational criminal organizations.
“Based on recent incidents in which Taiwanese suspects were taken away by force and in which relevant documents were unable to be sent to Taiwan, we would say that there is still much to be done,” the NPP said.
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