Four Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers yesterday filed a report with the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office against judicial officials for alleged dereliction of duty after former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) spent 25 minutes criticizing Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) in a livestream on Facebook on Tuesday last week.
The judicial officials were Minister of Justice Tsai Ching-hsiang (蔡清祥), Agency of Corrections Director Huang Chun-tang (黃俊棠) and Taichung Prison Superintendent Chiu Hung-chi (邱鴻基).
When Chen was released on medical parole, the Ministry of Justice clearly stated that he would not be allowed to give speeches, go on stage, accept interviews or discuss politics, said KMT Legislator Alex Fai (費鴻泰), who filed the report along with KMT legislators Jason Hsu (許毓仁), Huang Chao-shun (黃昭順) and Lin Te-fu (林德福).
Photo: Huang Chieh, Taipei Times
Instead, Chen has become an Internet celebrity, Fai said, urging officials to “open [their] eyes and ears.”
Chen is harming the judiciary, he said, adding that if people are allowed to trample the justice system, no one will trust it anymore.
The livestream was not the first time that Chen has broken the rules of his medical parole, Hsu said, citing examples of Chen’s alleged breaches, including participation in a political talk show in November 2016, attendance without prior notice at former president Lee Teng-hui’s (李登輝) birthday celebration in January last year and an interview with Japanese daily Sankei Shimbun published on Sept. 5 last year.
Chen nearly every day does a livestream at night that is then broadcast on TV, Huang Chao-shun said, adding that Chen’s 25-minute tirade against Han shows that his thoughts are lucid.
Huang Chao-shun said that he and others hoped to return the legal system to normal by filing a report, as the Ministry of Justice and the Taichung Prison have both ignored the situation.
“If Tsai and Huang Chun-tang continue to not handle the situation, will people still believe in the judiciary?” Lin asked.
Chen should immediately be sent back to jail to show the public that there are consequences, he added.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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