Activist groups yesterday joined the White Rose Social Care Association to stage a sit-in at the Judicial Yuan, to protest the ruling in a sexual harassment case involving a court judge, and deliver a petition with three key demands for reform in the judiciary.
About 60 activists sat in the plaza in front of the Judicial Yuan, holding up banners with slogans. Each protester held a white rose, a symbol of innocence and purity that was adopted in the original 2010 White Rose Movement, after the courts handed down lenient sentences in two cases involving the rape of underage girls and sparked widespread public anger.
At the peaceful sit-in, the protesters shouted: “Justice is dead” and “Refuse dinosaur judges,” which in Taiwan refers to judges who are regarded as outdated and often give rulings contrary to the public’s expectations.
Photo: Huang Hsin-po, Taipei Times
“We are here to protest the judiciary for the leniency shown to [Taipei High Administrative Court] judge Chen Hung-pin (陳鴻斌) in the second ruling on his sexual harassment case against his female assistant,” the association’s chairwoman Liang Yu-fang (梁毓芳) said.
Chen was dismissed from his job in the first ruling. However, the second ruling by the Judicial Yuan’s disciplinary court allowed Chen to keep his job and his pension, and he was fined NT$2.16 million (US$74,049).
Liang released a statement that listed the petition’s key demands as: a new judge taking office must have at least five years of working experience as a lawyer, judges must be limited to six-year terms, and people convicted of repeated sexual crimes and shown to be a danger to the public must not be released from prison based on an individual judge’s decision.
“The courts are not places for ‘rookie’ law practitioners,” the statement added. “Therefore we demand that judges have worked as lawyers for at least five years, and that they have worked within a specialized field for at least 80 percent of their litigation cases.”
“Judges should have close links with the prevailing attitudes and viewpoints of the public. Judges must not come from a tiny circle of society or hand out judgments based on their personal opinions, contrary to the will of the majority,” it said.
“This is what we have experienced of the arrogance typical to a group of people who believe they are society’s intellectual elites... Often we see them manipulate the judiciary at will, and we have no mechanisms to rein them in,” the statement said.
“This is because our system gives judges jobs for life, and nobody can touch them in any way. After they pass the examination to enter the Judges Academy, they can indulge in playing with the justice system. If they make a mistake, they can continue playing their games because they have fellow judges to protect them,” it said.
GREAT POWER COMPETITION: Beijing views its military cooperation with Russia as a means to push back against the joint power of the US and its allies, an expert said A recent Sino-Russian joint air patrol conducted over the waters off Alaska was designed to counter the US military in the Pacific and demonstrated improved interoperability between Beijing’s and Moscow’s forces, a national security expert said. National Defense University associate professor Chen Yu-chen (陳育正) made the comment in an article published on Wednesday on the Web site of the Journal of the Chinese Communist Studies Institute. China and Russia sent four strategic bombers to patrol the waters of the northern Pacific and Bering Strait near Alaska in late June, one month after the two nations sent a combined flotilla of four warships
THE TOUR: Pope Francis has gone on a 12-day visit to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore. He was also invited to Taiwan The government yesterday welcomed Pope Francis to the Asia-Pacific region and said it would continue extending an invitation for him to visit Taiwan. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs made the remarks as Pope Francis began a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific on Monday. He is to travel about 33,000km by air to visit Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore, and would arrive back in Rome on Friday next week. It would be the longest and most challenging trip of Francis’ 11-year papacy. The 87-year-old has had health issues over the past few years and now uses a wheelchair. The ministry said
TAIWANESE INNOVATION: The ‘Seawool’ fabric generates about NT$200m a year, with the bulk of it sourced by clothing brands operating in Europe and the US Growing up on Taiwan’s west coast where mollusk farming is popular, Eddie Wang saw discarded oyster shells transformed from waste to function — a memory that inspired him to create a unique and environmentally friendly fabric called “Seawool.” Wang remembered that residents of his seaside hometown of Yunlin County used discarded oyster shells that littered the streets during the harvest as insulation for their homes. “They burned the shells and painted the residue on the walls. The houses then became warm in the winter and cool in the summer,” the 42-year-old said at his factory in Tainan. “So I was
‘LEADERS’: The report highlighted C.C. Wei’s management at TSMC, Lisa Su’s decisionmaking at AMD and the ‘rock star’ status of Nvidia’s Huang Time magazine on Thursday announced its list of the 100 most influential people in artificial intelligence (AI), which included Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家), Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) and AMD chair and CEO Lisa Su (蘇姿丰). The list is divided into four categories: Leaders, Innovators, Shapers and Thinkers. Wei and Huang were named in the Leaders category. Other notable figures in the Leaders category included Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Meta CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Su was listed in the Innovators category. Time highlighted Wei’s
RSS