When the universality of international human rights standards is confronted with tremendous challenges in the worst of times, Taiwan, as a young and vibrant democracy in Asia, could become a beacon in leading human rights forward.
The Asian Human Rights Court Simulation (AHRCS), founded on Oct. 8, 2018, serves as an excellent example for spearheading the regional “shadow human rights court” in an attempt to create an Asian transnational oversight mechanism, given that Europe, the Americas and Africa long have had their own.
Former grand justice Hsu Yu-hsiu (許玉秀) sponsored the AHRCS, which aims to duplicate the success of the Constitutional Court Simulation (CCS).
However, creating the AHRCS was far more difficult: When it comes to political institutions in a regional sense, Asia is quite divisive. On the one hand, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan are well-functioning constitutional democracies; while on the other hand, China, North Korea and sometimes Singapore are criticized for exercising authoritarian rule and falling behind international human rights standards.
With her unshakable commitment to the promotion of the rule of law, Hsu said that the idea of pushing for the AHRCS began at the CCS oral arguments session in November 2016.
“When former justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa Richard Goldstone stated his expert opinion, I looked at his back from the audio control room and thought the CCS had been running smoothly for three consecutive years. Now, it is time for people across the globe to see that Taiwan is capable of running an international court. The time for founding the AHRCS has come,” Hsu said.
The founding meeting was held at the end of 2018, and participants included Mab Huang (黃默), Soochow University’s liberal arts chair professor and founding editor-in-chief of the Taiwan Human Rights Journal; Chen Jau-hwa (陳瑤華), then the director of the Chang Fo-chuan Center for the Study of Human Rights; National Taiwan University law professor Chang Wen-chen (張文貞); and Mah Weng Kwai, a former Court of Appeals judge in Malaysia, to name a few.
A seven-judge panel was then elected and open to case submissions. The panel subsequently decided to hear the case of Chiou Ho-shun (邱和順) vs the Republic of China (Taiwan).
Chiou, accused of being the head of a 12-member criminal gang responsible for murdering and dismembering a woman in November 1987, and kidnapping a 10-year-old boy in December 1987, was first sentenced to death in November 1989, the AHRCS Web site states.
From the start, Chiou has insisted on his innocence, and claimed that police and prosecutors used torture and abuse to interrogate and forced him and his 11 codefendants to confess.
The illegal police conduct was confirmed by investigative reports by the Control Yuan, yet the judiciary relied on those forced confessions to sentence Chiou to death.
In 2007, the Legal Aid Foundation and attorneys Lin Yong-song (林永頌) and Yu Po-hsiang (尤伯祥) read Chiou’s case file, and said they believed in his innocence without a shadow of a doubt. More volunteer lawyers subsequently joined the Judicial Reform Foundation’s legal team fighting for Chiou’s basic human rights.
Chiou’s life is at stake. Imagine someone languishing in a cell at the Taipei Detention Center for 31 years — a place lacking proper hygiene and ventilation. What would have kept his faith in life? The answer is simple: family members, friends and the people who support him.
When I worked for Chiou’s legal team and saw every volunteer lawyer and non-governmental organization activists fighting tirelessly for his life, I felt that we lived in a different time zone from that of Chiou.
I looked at the hands of the clock moving as usual in our conference room and imagined how the clock in Chiou’s cell has not moved at all since 1988. The time for justice is yet to come.
In October last year, the team won a favorable verdict rendered by seven international law experts, unbiased judges from all over Asia.
The seven-judge panel held that the “Supreme Court of the Respondent [Taiwan] [must] do what is just and necessary to remedy and rectify all breaches of human rights.”
The legal team is now demanding that President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) grant Chiou amnesty, and urging the Taiwanese public to join an online petition — “Pardon Chiou Ho-shun After 31 Years in Despair!”
As former South African president Nelson Mandela said: “No one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones.”
If Tsai is committed to promoting our cherished and valued way of life — democracy, freedom and respect for human rights — then she is duty-bound to grant Chiou amnesty.
Tsai’ s legacy will be remembered 20 years from now, judging by her record not only in pushing for vital national reforms, but in improving the lowest citizens’ lives.
I would like to remind Tsai: Do not forget that the lives behind bars are still lives.
Chiou’s life is hanging in the balance.
Huang Yu-zhe is an undergraduate studying political science at Soochow University and a former executive secretary of Chiou Ho-shun’s Judicial Reform Foundation legal team.
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