Hsieh Wen-ting (謝文定), a commissioner at the Commission on the Disciplinary Sanctions of Functionaries, was a prosecutor during the Martial Law period.
That makes him a perpetrator of the judicial wrongs that took place under martial law, so it came as quite a shock to hear about President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) nomination of Hsieh to be the next president of the Judicial Yuan.
Many wrongful verdicts were made during the Martial Law era and Hsieh’s role as a prosecutor made him an accomplice to those wrongdoings.
Hsieh was even praised by former president Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) for his “outstanding service.”
Tsai’s nomination of someone with such a background leaves the question of what kind of transitional justice she has in mind.
Tsai used to be a professor of law, so she can hardly be unaware that prosecutors during the Martial Law era were institutional perpetrators and, as such, they are criminals who should be brought to account.
Even though the judicial system let them go during the Martial Law period, they should not be allowed to come back and wield judicial power. A mechanism for them to leave the system should have been instituted long ago.
Tsai has repeatedly talked about how she wants to implement transitional justice, but now she wants to let perpetrators become protectors of the judicial system.
This is the complete opposite of what should be done and has made Taiwan an international laughingstock.
During the Martial Law era, not only did the perpetrators bear no responsibility for their mistakes — they were also not held accountable for their crimes. In those days, it seemed like a normal state of affairs for people to be deprived of their human rights.
Generations of long-suffering Taiwanese, using peaceful means, gave their blood and sweat, their youth and their lives to win the precious democracy and freedom that this nation enjoys today.
However, the fact that the perpetrators were not put on trial does not mean that Taiwan can no longer judge right from wrong.
The reason that Germany’s transitional justice won the respect of people around the world is that it has continued to pursue those responsible, putting them on trial if necessary. The perpetrators of murderous crimes in the past are held liable for the rest of their lives — there is no statute of limitations for them.
In Taiwan, where the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) remained in power after the end of martial law, transitional justice was never even touched upon.
Even before martial law was lifted, the KMT was worried that the perpetrators would be held to account, so the government drew up a law that protected the perpetrators by not allowing them to be held criminally liable. As a result, when Taiwan tackles cases of wrongful verdicts from the Martial Law era, there are only victims, but no perpetrators.
Not only does this absurdity remain unresolved, in Tsai’s mind it is no longer very important, and that is why she has forgotten about the existence of perpetrators from that period.
As Taiwan has never held fair trials, there is no clarity about right and wrong. That is how the perpetrators have been able to use half-truths to create disputes and confrontations in society — to the extent that even the president cannot tell right from wrong.
Liou Uie-liang is a former president of the Taiwan Association in Germany.
Translated by Julian Clegg
In November last year, a man struck a woman with a steel bar and killed her outside a hospital in China’s Fujian Province. Later, he justified his actions to the police by saying that he attacked her because she was small and alone, and he was venting his anger after a dispute with a colleague. To the casual observer, it could be seen as another case of an angry man gone mad for a moment, but on closer inspection, it reflects the sad side of a society long brutalized by violent political struggles triggered by crude Leninism and Maoism. Starting
The year 2020 will go down in history. Certainly, if for nothing else, it will be remembered as the year of the COVID-19 pandemic and the continuing impact it has had on the world. All nations have had to deal with it; none escaped. As a virus, COVID-19 has known no bounds. It has no agenda or ideology; it champions no cause. There is no way to bully it, gaslight it or bargain with it. Impervious to any hype, posturing, propaganda or commands, it ignores such and simply attacks. All nations, big or small, are on a level playing field
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s announcement on Saturday that the US was to drop self-imposed restrictions on meetings between senior Taiwanese and US officials had immediate real-world effects. On Monday, US Ambassador to the Netherlands Pete Hoekstra met Representative to the Netherlands Chen Hsing-hsing (陳欣新) at the US embassy in The Hague, with both noting on social media the historic nature of this seemingly modest event. Modest perhaps, but their meeting would have been impossible before Pompeo’s announcement. Some have welcomed this move, thinking that it is long-overdue and a step in the right direction to normalizing relations between
The US last week took action to remove most of the diplomatic red tape around US-Taiwan relations. While there have been adjustments in State Department “Guidelines on Relations with Taiwan” and other guidance before, no administration has ever so thoroughly dispensed with them. It is a step in the right direction. Of course, when there is a policy of formally recognizing one government (the People’s Republic of China or PRC) and not another (the Republic of China or ROC), officials from the top of government down need a systematic way of operationalizing the distinction. They cannot just make it up as
RSS