Sun, Jul 08, 2001 page2

• Family sues over `white terror' death

  MYSTERY A local professor was said to have jumped to his death after being questioned by the notorious Taiwan Garrison General Headquarters. Twenty years on, however, the mystery surrounding that night has prompted his family to file a civil suit

  • By Tsai Ting-I / STAFF REPORTER
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  The family of professor Chen Wen-cheng (陳文成), believed to have been murdered for political reasons in 1981, have filed a civil suit for murder against several officials of the Taiwan Garrison General Headquarters (TGGH, 警備總部) in the hope of finding an explanation for his mysterious death.

  Chen's death, together with the murders of former DPP chairman Lin I-hsiung's (林義雄) family and of Henry Liu (劉宜良), remains one of the more notorious unsolved mysteries of the "white terror" perpetrated by the KMT government while Taiwan was under martial law.

  Since Chen was, at the time of his death, an assistant professor at a US university, his demise attracted international attention.

  Concerned that any interview might unduly influence the lawsuit, Chen's older sister, Chen Pao-yueh (陳寶月), who filed the suit, declined to discuss the case. But according to Chinese-language media, her family has sought an explanation from the government for 20 years.

  Their father, Chen Ting-mao (陳庭茂), had wished to discover the facts surrounding Chen's death before he died.

  The family had expected that President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), who often spoke of Chen's case during his campaign to become a Taipei City councilor in 1981, would help after he took office, but, disappointed, they decided to act by themselves.

  One of Chen Pao-yueh's attorneys, Lee Sheng-hsiung (李勝雄), emphasized that the purpose of the suit is not to punish anybody but to establish the facts behind Chen's mysterious death.

  "We expect to learn more information about Chen's death from the five defendants' accounts and TGGH materials obtained through the prosecutor's investigation," Lee said.

  Chen had been a vocal critic of the KMT government at Taiwanese student union meetings in the US, which brought him to the attention of the government.

  Government officials claimed that he had admitted setting up 10 foundations in the US to raise money for Formosa magazine, a dissident journal, but Chen's friends were doubtful of the claim.

  Chen's body was found at National Taiwan University on the morning of July 3, 1981, after the TGGH had interrogated him.

  The body had thirteen broken ribs, a broken spine and numerous other internal and external injuries consistent with his having been severely beaten.

  A US forensic pathologist, Cyril Wecht, who traveled to Taiwan to investigate the case, concluded that Chen's death was caused by being dropped from the fifth floor fire escape of the university research library while unconscious and that his death was a homicide.

  The garrison headquarters initially claimed that Chen had committed suicide because he feared being arrested for his crimes, but changed its account the following day, saying he had died in an accident. Chen's family and friends, however, refuse to believe that Chen would commit suicide.

  Chen was an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University in the US, and his death attracted much attention and pressure from the international community.

  Republican congressman Jim Leach proposed a congressional investigation into Taiwanese espionage in the US.

  The State Department held investigative hearings in July and August, 1981. The president of Carnegie Mellon University, Richard Cyert, sent a message to the president at the time, Chiang Ching-Kuo (蔣經國), stating his belief that Chen had been murdered and accusing Chiang's government of using Taiwanese students to spy on their fellow students in the US.

  Professors and presidential advisors who experienced the martial law period insist that the truth behind miscarriages of justice must be revealed and the government should apologize to and compensate victims.

  Huang Chao-tang (黃昭堂), a presidential advisor and chairman of World United Formosans for Independence, said "The KMT government couldn't have persecuted so many people without help, and discovering the facts behind these cases would force those Taiwanese who helped the KMT government to face and admit what they did."

  The government actually started work on redress for victims of miscarriages of justice during the martial law period when the Legislative Yuan passed a regulation providing for compensation in 1998. But the current administration has not taken up the matter.

  Compensation had already been paid in 2,786 cases to the end of June this year. It requires the victim to have been interrogated and detained for at least one day.

  Chen's case, however, doesn't qualify since he wasn't detained.

  Huang criticized the criteria, saying, "Not only can Chen's case not be counted, there are a lot of victims who were just arrested and beaten without record. How can they be compensated?"

  In 1994, the Control Yuan started a further investigation into Chen's death, but, concluding that the case was a criminal case, decided that it did not have the jurisdiction to investigate it and transferred it to the Ministry of Justice.

  "From the investigation, we found a couple of suspicious points about his death, such as the body was found too close to the building from which he allegedly jumped, and his injuries didn't look like injuries resultant from a fall, as the postmortem report stated," said Chou Jung-yao (趙榮耀), a member of the Control Yuan committee which investigated the case.

  "Investigation of these points, however, is a matter for a criminal investigation, which we didn't have the right to conduct," Chou said.

  Hsieh Tsung-min (謝聰敏), an advisor to the president and the justice ministry -- and also a victim of the white terror -- said that the Control Yuan couldn't have discovered anything new without the right to conduct a criminal investigation.

  "The Control Yuan can't really do a good job of an investigation without jurisdiction. The justice ministry is the organization that could investigate these unsolved cases, but as an advisor to the justice ministry, [I can tell you that] the ministry doesn't have the resources to investigate all of these cases.

  "The victims and their families can take action through the judicial process, which I think is the best way," Hsieh said.
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