Former National Science Council deputy minister Hsieh Ching-jyh (謝清志), who was found not guilty of corruption in July after a legal battle that lasted for a year and a half, on Tuesday slammed the prosecutors who detained him and other former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) political leaders without charge, accusing them of assuming defendants to be “guilty until proven innocent.”
In a presentation at the Heritage Foundation think tank in Washington, Hsieh complained that Taiwan's prosecutors use circumstantial evidence and regularly leak information to friendly media outlets to build a case against suspects.
Hsieh complained about the political aspects of the recent jailing of DPP leaders without charge. He noted that in a press conference in Tainan on the date of his indictment, prosecutor Kao Fong-chi (高峰祈) “clearly said that Mr Hsieh is a pro-Taiwan independence movement activist and in the green camp,” which had nothing to do with the charges leveled at him.
Hsieh told the Taipei Times that when Tainan chief prosecutor Chu Tsao-liang, (朱朝亮), Kao's superior, arrested him, Chu told him that the action was not because he was guilty, but “to teach him a lesson.”
Chu is now a member of the special government investigation task force in Taipei responsible for the detaining without charge of a number of former DPP officials.
Steve Yates, a Washington Asian affairs consultant and former Asia adviser to US Vice President Dick Cheney, echoed Hsieh's complaints and called on the administration of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) to rectify problems with the legal system.
Discussing his 59 days in “preventive detention” — without charge —with two other inmates in a small cell that disallowed them room to sleep lying flat, Hsieh said: “In Taiwan, the law is really reversed.”
This meant that “ prosecutors arbitrarily use circumstantial evidence to put people in prison,” and that when such cases come to trial based on such evidence, it meant that suspects were “considered guilty until
“So, the burden of proof is on the defendant rather than on the normal procedure, which is that the prosecutor has to prove guilt with evidence beyond a reasonable doubt,” he said.
Yates doubted that Taiwan's prosecutors were utilizing preventive detention in a way that ensured fair and appropriate treatment for the accused.
“Do the people of Taiwan believe that the same procedures used for terrorists [in other countries] should be used for a public official under suspicion and not yet proven to be involved in corruption?” he asked.
Yates said these detention measures are established procedure in Taiwan, before adding: “Because something is legal, does it mean it is appropriate or just?”
Citing the White Terror period of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) rule, Yates called on Ma to revise and modernize the law.
Ma “should know where there is room for change,” he said.
“Given the history of politics in Taiwan, it is reasonable to raise the issue of the need for some sensitivity about the appearance of one government governed by a party that was in power during a time when the law was used for the interest of party development against [opponents] from time to time, that now there is an opportunity to improve the system and how it is applied,” he said.
Yates, an expert on Taiwanese affairs and also a former lobbyist for Taiwan in Washington, asked why it was that the most punitive aspect of the law was being reactivated after lying dormant for years.
“Why is it now being applied? ... Uncomfortably, for public perception, the targets all seem to have one thing in common, and that is membership in one political party,” he said.
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