New York University (NYU) professor Jerome Cohen has lamented the reluctance of members of Taiwan’s legal profession to speak out about problems with the judicial system.
In his latest article, Cohen criticizes the nation’s “law professors, legal scholars and social scientists” for their failure to highlight perceived injustices within the system, while comparing them unfavorably with their Chinese counterparts.
The piece, entitled “Silence of the Lambs,” appeared in Thursday’s edition of Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post.
Speaking about a recent trip to Taiwan, Cohen, the co-director of NYU’s US-Asia law institute and President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) supervisor during his studies at Harvard, said that he had heard numerous complaints from legal academics about biased judges and political prosecution, the lack of progress on judicial reform and the continued detention of former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁).
While these people were prepared to share their grievances with him in private, Cohen said that they were unwilling to go public, saying they feared they would be accused of being a pan-green supporter or of being soft on corruption.
Others said going public would make little difference, that they were too busy with work or family, or that it could interfere with government appointments, he wrote.
Cohen went on to say that without such public concern it would “be difficult to achieve optimum solutions to many major law reform issues” in Taiwan.
Legal professionals in Taiwan who hold back are exercising fewer freedoms than their Chinese counterparts, he said, who often risk their “physical safety, their careers and their family’s well-being by ‘speaking truth to power.’”
“If they fail to take advantage of their hard-earned freedoms to speak out, they put their society’s precious accomplishments at risk,” he wrote.
Tropical Storm Usagi strengthened to a typhoon yesterday morning and remains on track to brush past southeastern Taiwan from tomorrow to Sunday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. As of 2pm yesterday, the storm was approximately 950km east-southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan proper’s southernmost point, the CWA said. It is expected to enter the Bashi Channel and then turn north, moving into waters southeast of Taiwan, it said. The agency said it could issue a sea warning in the early hours of today and a land warning in the afternoon. As of 2pm yesterday, the storm was moving at
UPDATED FORECAST: The warning covered areas of Pingtung County and Hengchun Peninsula, while a sea warning covering the southern Taiwan Strait was amended The Central Weather Administration (CWA) at 5:30pm yesterday issued a land warning for Typhoon Usagi as the storm approached Taiwan from the south after passing over the Philippines. As of 5pm, Usagi was 420km south-southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan proper’s southernmost tip, with an average radius of 150km, the CWA said. The land warning covered areas of Pingtung County and the Hengchun Peninsula (恆春), and came with an amended sea warning, updating a warning issued yesterday morning to cover the southern part of the Taiwan Strait. No local governments had announced any class or office closures as of press time last night. The typhoon
DISCONTENT: The CCP finds positive content about the lives of the Chinese living in Taiwan threatening, as such video could upset people in China, an expert said Chinese spouses of Taiwanese who make videos about their lives in Taiwan have been facing online threats from people in China, a source said yesterday. Some young Chinese spouses of Taiwanese make videos about their lives in Taiwan, often speaking favorably about their living conditions in the nation compared with those in China, the source said. However, the videos have caught the attention of Chinese officials, causing the spouses to come under attack by Beijing’s cyberarmy, they said. “People have been messing with the YouTube channels of these Chinese spouses and have been harassing their family members back in China,”
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday said there are four weather systems in the western Pacific, with one likely to strengthen into a tropical storm and pose a threat to Taiwan. The nascent tropical storm would be named Usagi and would be the fourth storm in the western Pacific at the moment, along with Typhoon Yinxing and tropical storms Toraji and Manyi, the CWA said. It would be the first time that four tropical cyclones exist simultaneously in November, it added. Records from the meteorology agency showed that three tropical cyclones existed concurrently in January in 1968, 1991 and 1992.
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