The Transitional Justice Commission yesterday said that it has made four discoveries in its investigation into the death of Chen Wen-chen (陳文成), a Carnegie Mellon University assistant professor who died in July 1981 during a visit to Taiwan.
Chen, 31, was found dead outside the library on the campus of National Taiwan University in Taipei on the morning of July 3, 1981.
The Taiwan Garrison Command, a secret police body, had reportedly questioned him for more than 12 hours the day before.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
The commission said in a news conference in Taipei that Chen and his family had been under close surveillance before his death, and the government continued to monitor his family afterward.
There was also no way to determine from the evidence available whether Chen ever left police custody after he was taken for questioning, it said.
Chen’s body had been placed to make it appear that he had jumped from an upper floor of a campus building, but it was highly likely that he was murdered elsewhere and then thrown from the building, the commission said.
It added that the government had obstructed Chen’s family in their search for the truth.
When Chen’s body was found his wallet was not in the pocket he would normally place it, and there was a banknote in one of his shoes, commission member and defense attorney Greg Yo (尤伯祥) said, citing testimony from Chen’s family members.
New evidence shows that Chen had been under surveillance since Sept. 30, 1979, when police intercepted a call between Chen and democracy activist Shih Ming-te (施明德), Yo said, adding that Chen and his family had also been monitored by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) regime while living in the US.
Yo said that Chen was nearly hit by a black sedan that was following his bus during a trip to Kenting National Park after he had returned to Taiwan. Citing friends of Chen, Yo said that someone attempted to push Chen out of the bus in front of the vehicle.
At the time of Chen’s death, police had said that he was taken for questioning from 9pm to 9:30pm on the evening before his death and then driven home, Yo said.
However, the commission could not locate a recording from the interrogation, and the transcript was incomplete, he added.
The commission also found problems with the testimony of the only purported witness from the evening that Chen was questioned, Teng Wei-hsiang (鄧維祥), Yo said, adding that there was no evidence that Chen ever had any contact with Teng.
The commission had spoken with forensic examiner Lee Chun-yi (李俊億) — who worked on the case at the time — and confirmed that Chen had died before falling from the building, Yo said.
Lee had initially identified wounds on Chen’s body as having come from a collision with a water drainage ditch, but closer inspection of the earliest photographs taken of the body showed bruises that came from some other type of impact, he said.
Tears in Chen’s clothing also matched the locations of those bruises on his body, he added.
Blood stains on the clothing were also indicative of the body having been dragged, but investigators at the time had claimed the blood stains were grass stains, Yo said.
The commission would continue its investigation, but would be unable to interview then-command division director Tsuo Hsiao-han (鄒小韓), who had long since moved to the US and has not been found, he said.
One of the next tasks for the commission would be to locate records of the KMT’s monitoring of Chen while he was in the US, commission member Yeh Hung-ling (葉虹靈) said.
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