Academics yesterday clashed over the scope of “transitional justice” at a final meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Judiciary and Organic Laws and Statutes Committee before a line-by-line review of proposed transitional justice legislation begins later this week.
Convened by committee co-convener Lin Wei-chou (林為洲), a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator, the hearing featured numerous pan-blue-leaning representatives, many of whom repeatedly criticized the draft legislation’s concept of transitional justice as being overly vague and arbitrary.
“Transitional justice is a piece of political correctness which sometimes encompasses contradictory double standards,” said Lee Sun-cheng (李鎨澂), an analyst with the National Policy Foundation, a prominent KMT think tank.
Ko Ko-chung Lee echoed KMT claims that the DPP caucus’ draft legislation unfairly focuses on abuses of power under martial law, while ignoring historic injustices suffered by Aborigines.
The draft bill calls for establishing a special committee under the Executive Yuan with broad powers to investigate transitional justice issues, including declassifying government files and removing symbolic vestiges of authoritarianism, with a mandate to draft more concrete legislation to address specific issues.
“This law would represent legalization of morality, using numerous concepts for which there is no clear legal definition,” said Hsieh Shiang-ching (謝相慶), a professor at the Public Administration Department of Tamkang University, citing “liberal democracy” and “justice” as examples of legally vague political and philosophical concepts sprinkled throughout the text of the proposed bill.
Chinese Culture University political science professor Yang Tai-shun (楊泰順) said the legislation’s “discarding” of existing legal frameworks would make it self-defeating.
“The point of transitional justice is to heal the social divisions caused by authoritarian rule, but there is a danger of making those divisions deeper if you discard existing legal frameworks to settle accounts,” he said.
Other academics said the legislation had a clear focus in remedying the problem of legal injustices perpetuated under authoritarian rule, with conceptual roots in constitutional human rights guarantees.
“Freedom is part of our fundamental constitutional articles, so there is no way you can say the word has no legal basis,” National Taiwan University law professor Ko Ko-chung (柯格鍾) said, adding that justice also has a specific legal connotation.
“Transitional justice specifically targets actions which were legal, but not in line with the spirit of constitutional human rights guarantees,” he said.
“Transitional justice is not an endless attempt to remedy all historical injustices experienced by humankind, because that would impossible — so it has to be focused on the current political system” said Ko Chao-chin (柯朝欽), a professor of sociology at National Chiao Tung University.
Kao said Aboriginal rights should be addressed separately because the historic injustices they suffered were different in kind from those perpetrated under martial law.
Despite divisions over transitional justice, most participants agreed on the need to publicize more documents related to human rights abuses during the Martial Law era.
An official National Archives Administration report submitted to the committee stated that while all documents related to the 228 Incident — an uprising that began on Feb. 27, 1947, and was violently suppressed by the KMT government — has been declassified, 244 files related to other important political incidents and cases remain classified.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods