The inking of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between Taiwan and Japan on judiciary and legal affairs is a groundbreaking achievement, improving legal protection of rights and justice, officials said on Thursday.
The MOU, which calls for mutual assistance and exchange of legal matters, was finalized in a ceremony at the Japan-Taiwan Exchange Association office in Tokyo on Thursday.
Association Chairman Ohashi Mitsuo and Taiwan-Japan Relations Association Chairman Su Jia-chyuan (蘇嘉全) signed the agreement, which they lauded as a breakthrough for diplomacy and cooperation in legal affairs.
Photo copied by Wu Cheng-feng, Taipei Times
Representative to Japan Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) attended the ceremony as a witness, a statement by the Ministry of Justice said, adding that the agreement deepened relations and enhanced links between the two sides.
“The MOU is based on the common values of freedom, democracy, respect for rule of law and protection of fundamental human rights, as shared by both countries. We strive to strengthen the links, and to promote closer collaboration in judiciary and legal affairs, and to foster more trust in our working partnership,” Taiwanese and Japanese officials said in a statement.
The MOU has taken more than three years to finalize, as Minister of Justice Tsai Ching-hsiang (蔡清祥) initiated the collaboration in 2020 with staff at the ministry’s Department of International and Cross-Strait Legal Affairs, it said.
The negotiation period with counterparts in Japan also received guidance from the Investigation Bureau’s International Operations Division and from the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in Japan, the statement said.
Three years of effort have enabled progress in legal rights protection for Taiwanese and Japanese, it said.
“For the MOU to take effect, the justice systems and judiciary agencies in both countries will exchange respective information and case study files, and also access advice by legal professionals,” it said.
“The bilateral cooperation will hold meetings and seminars, organize reciprocal research visits and provide open access to judiciary databases and publications,” it said.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as the Japanese Ministry of Justice helped finalize the details of the agreement, while other officials helped strengthen ties between the two countries, the statement said.
The MOU allows for closer collaboration and deepening of ties between law enforcement agencies and justice systems on both sides, which would improve the legal protection of citizens’ rights, the Ministry of Justice said.
With the application of equality in the rule of law in both nations, the two sides can develop a closer working relationship and boost friendly ties, it said.
Separately on Wednesday, German prosecutors during a meeting with Tsai urged Taiwan to enhance cybercrime investigation capabilities by law enforcement agencies.
Taiwan can benefit by learning from the experience of German law enforcement in the investigation and prosecution of crime, Tsai told a post-meeting news conference at the Ministry of Justice in Taipei.
Taiwanese and German prosecutors share a similar judicial framework and their legal languages are mutually intelligible, he said, adding that exchanges between Taiwanese and Bavarian legal officials are valuable.
The ministry is in the process of creating a mechanism for exchanges between Taiwanese and German prosecutors that would improve the nation’s ability to deal with crime through applied law, Tsai said.
Wednesday’s meeting addressed the challenge of countering Internet-based crime, the response to which involves the creation and implementation of laws that govern technology use, he said.
Rapidly improving the ability to investigate digital crime is a global challenge for law enforcement officials, as criminals are almost always the first to adopt new technologies, Bamberg Public Prosecutors’ Office Attorney General Wolfgang Grundler said.
Meanwhile, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich professor of law Helmut Satzger announced the delivery of an MOU for the cooperation between the university and the ministry at a conference held by the ministry on the same day.
The agreement, signed last month by Munich Higher Regional Court Judge Beate Gsell, who is also the dean of the university’s Faculty of Law, would enable Taiwanese prosecutors to be temporarily embedded as observers in the Public Prosecutors’ Office in Munich, he said.
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