Groups campaigning for judicial reform yesterday protested their exclusion from “public hearings” on a bill to ensure the right to a speedy trial.
Taiwan has a number of criminal cases that have bounced back and forth between the supreme and high courts for years. In one case, three former senior managers at a bank went through repeated trials for three decades before the verdict was finalized. The three were found innocent.
Amid heavy criticism over such cases from legal experts and activists pushing for judicial reform, the Judicial Yuan is drafting a bill intended to speed up criminal cases.
The bill includes measures such as increasing the number of assistants for judges and restricting prosecutors’ right to appeal under certain circumstances.
The Judicial Yuan arranged a series of public hearings in Taipei, Taichung, Tainan, Kaohsiung and Hualien to review the content of the bill, but only invited judges, prosecutors, lawyers and law professors, excluding representatives from several civic groups actively working with the issue, the groups said in a statement.
The groups include the Taiwan Association for Human Rights (TAHR), Green Party Taiwan, the National Union of Taiwan Women’s Associations, the Taiwan Labor Front, Amnesty International Taiwan, Wild at Heart Legal Defense Association, the Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty and the Humanistic Education Foundation.
“These ‘public hearings’ are neither open to the public nor aimed at listening to the public,” the statement said.
“We are groups that specialize in judicial matters. We have all handled legal cases involving human rights abuses in various fields,” the statement said. “We may be better representatives of the people involved in these cases than legal professionals.”
TAHR secretary-general Tsai Chih-hsun (蔡季勳) said her organization had been working closely with the defendants in the Hsichih Trio case, in which three men spent years on death row despite a lack of forensic evidence linking them to two murders in Sijhih (汐止), Taipei County, in 1991. The case was reopened and the men acquitted in 2003. However, the ruling was not final and the case is continuing after 10 trials.
“We know what they’re thinking and know the suffering they’ve been through,” Tsai said.
“The Judicial Yuan should have invited these victims of the judiciary to attend the hearings or they should at least have consulted the groups who have been working closely with such victims,” she said.
The Hsichih Trio — Liu Bing-lang (劉秉郎), Su Chien-ho (蘇建和) and Chuang Lin-hsun (莊林勳) — have been allowed to return home while their trial continues and Su began working at TAHR after his release.
Tsai said that the Judicial Yuan had drafted the bill in response to the public’s calls and “should not work [on it] behind closed doors ... We often have to wait until a bill is submitted to the Legislative Yuan for review to know what exactly is in it.”
Judicial Yuan official Lee Wen-fu (李文福) said yesterday that it was not the best time to involve the public in the process because the bill was still being drafted.
“We’re not even sure what direction we’re heading in yet and we can’t really discuss with the public a plan that doesn’t exist,” he said.
Hong Kong-based American singer-songwriter Khalil Fong (方大同) has passed away at the age of 41, Fong’s record label confirmed yesterday. “With unwavering optimism in the face of a relentless illness for five years, Khalil Fong gently and gracefully bid farewell to this world on the morning of February 21, 2025, stepping into the next realm of existence to carry forward his purpose and dreams,” Fu Music wrote on the company’s official Facebook page. “The music and graphic novels he gifted to the world remain an eternal testament to his luminous spirit, a timeless treasure for generations to come,” it said. Although Fong’s
China’s military buildup in the southern portion of the first island chain poses a serious threat to Taiwan’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) supply, a defense analyst warned. Writing in a bulletin on the National Defense and Security Research’s Web site on Thursday, Huang Tsung-ting (黃宗鼎) said that China might choke off Taiwan’s energy supply without it. Beginning last year, China entrenched its position in the southern region of the first island chain, often with Russia’s active support, he said. In May of the same year, a Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) force consisting of a Type 054A destroyer, Type 055 destroyer,
Actor Darren Wang (王大陸) was questioned by prosecutors for allegedly orchestrating an attack on a taxi driver after he was allegedly driven on a longer than necessary route in a car he disliked. The questioning at the New Taipei City District Prosecutors’ Office was ongoing as of press time last night. Police have recommended charges of attempted murder. The legally embattled actor — known for his role in the coming-of-age film Our Times (我的少女時代) — is under a separate investigation for allegedly using fake medical documents to evade mandatory military service. According to local media reports, police said Wang earlier last year ordered a
Taiwan is planning to expand the use of artificial intelligence (AI)-based X-ray imaging to customs clearance points over the next four years to curb the smuggling of contraband, a Customs Administration official said. The official on condition of anonymity said the plan would cover meat products, e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products, large bundles of banknotes and certain agricultural produce. Taiwan began using AI image recognition systems in July 2021. This year, generative AI — a subset of AI which uses generative models to produce data — would be used to train AI models to produce realistic X-ray images of contraband, the official
RSS