Former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) did not receive a fair trial and could be seen as a de facto political prisoner, a fact-finding mission sent by a Taiwanese-American organization concluded in its preliminary findings after a two-week investigation in Taiwan.
The way Chen, who is serving an 18-and-a-half-year sentence for corruption and is currently in hospital receiving medical treatment for various ailments, has been treated in prison and the way his trial was handled have not been seen even in some dictatorships, the two-member mission told the Taipei Times in an interview.
Michael Richardson and Mary Loan traveled to Taiwan to conduct a “truth-seeking” inquiry on behalf of the Formosan Association for Human Rights (FAHR). They left on Friday.
During their two-week visit, they met with Chen in his hospital room and conducted interviews with pan-green camp legislators, Chen’s attorneys, Chen’s medical team and human rights activists, Richardson said.
Richardson said a formal report will not be ready for several weeks, but that preliminary findings clearly establish three ways in which Chen did not receive a fair trial.
First, there are various structural problems with Taiwan’s justice system because having “no jury trials, politically appointed judges and the ability of prosecutors to appeal not-guilty verdicts all serve to create opportunity for judicial abuse.”
Second, a number of unusual and irregular procedural events cast serious doubt on the fairness of the former president’s trial, including the changing of judges, midnight court sessions, an after-hours skit by prosecutors mocking Chen, reportedly improper communication between the court and the prosecution and restrictions on public attendance, Richardson said.
“Third, there were classic indicators of an unfair trial: Perjured testimony, a prosecution deal and recanted testimony,” he said.
Richardson did not speak to any government officials because he thought “the government was represented by what it has done.”
While President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has reiterated that he would keep his hands off the judicial system, Richardson said his investigation clearly implicated that the trial had been politically influenced and would be deemed “unfair by any standards in the US.”
Richardson, who is from Boston, Massachusetts, and currently lives in the Central American country of Belize, said Chen’s health and his hospital environment, which “was more like a hospital cell and kept Chen largely in isolation,” were also a concern.
Recalling his first meeting with Chen in April 2010, when the former president was an inmate at the Taipei Detention Center, Richardson said Chen “was animated, very upbeat and smiled a lot.”
However, “[Chen] was a different man than [the one] I met two years ago. He was a broken man,” Richardson said, adding that Chen never smiled and made no eye contact during their one-hour meeting at Taipei Veterans General Hospital.
Neither Chen’s environment at the hospital nor the treatment he received in prison were acceptable, Richardson said.
Chen’s hospital room was “not an environment in which somebody who suffers from severe depression can heal,” he said.
In prison, “perhaps the only thing they haven’t done to him is waterboarding,” Richardson added, citing what he learned from interviews with various sources.
“If all the prisoners in Taiwan are being treated the way he’s been treated, there’s a big problem with Taiwan’s prison system,” he said.
Richardson said he had briefed officials at the American Institute in Taiwan about his findings and would submit his report to the FAHR after returning to the US.
Richardson began studying Taiwan’s history and political development six years ago. His previous field of expertise was electoral law and how people in overseas US territories, such as Puerto Rico, Guam and Samoa, obtain US citizenship.
SEND A MESSAGE: Sinking the amphibious assault ship, the lead warship of its class, is meant to show China the US Navy is capable of sinking their ships, an analyst said The US and allied navies plan to sink a 40,000-tonne ship at the latest Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercise to simulate defeating a Chinese amphibious assault on Taiwan. This year’s RIMPAC — the 29th iteration of the world’s largest naval exercise — involves the US, 28 partners, more than 25,000 personnel, 40 warships, three submarines and more than 150 aircraft operating in and around Hawaii from yesterday to Aug. 1, the US Navy said in a press release. The major components of the event include multidomain warfare exercises in multiship surface engagements, anti-submarine warfare and multi-axis defense of a carrier strike
Taiwanese could risk being extradited to China when traveling in countries with close ties to Beijing, Taiwan Association of University Professors deputy chairman Chen Li-fu (陳俐甫) said on Friday. Chen’s comments came after China on Friday last week announced new judicial guidelines targeting Taiwanese independence advocates. Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos and Djibouti are among the countries where Taiwanese could risk being extradited to China, he said. The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) on Thursday elevated the travel alert for China, Hong Kong and Macau to “orange” after Beijing announced its guidelines to “severely punish Taiwanese independence diehards for splitting the country and inciting secession.” Extradition treaties
The airspace around Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport and Taipei International Airport (Songshan airport) is to be closed for an hour on July 25 and July 23 respectively, due to the Han Kuang military exercises, the Ministry of National Defense said yesterday. The annual exercise is to be held on Taiwan proper and its outlying islands from July 22 to 26. During last year’s exercise, the military conducted anti-aircraft landing drills at the Taoyuan airport for the first time, for which a one-hour no-fly ban was issued. Based on a live-fire bulletin sent out by the Maritime and Port Bureau, the nation’s
CROSS-BORDER CRIME: The suspects cannot be charged with cybercrime in Indonesia as their targets were in Malaysia, an Indonesian immigration director said Indonesian immigration authorities have detained 103 Taiwanese after a raid at a villa on Bali, officials said yesterday. They were accused of misusing their visas and residence permits, and are suspected of possible cybercrimes, Safar Muhammad Godam, director of immigration supervision and enforcement at the Indonesian Ministry of Law and Human Rights told reporters at a news conference. “The 103 foreign nationals stayed at the villa and conducted suspicious activities, which we suspect are activities related to cybercrime activities,” he said, presenting laptops and routers at the news conference. Godam said Indonesian authorities cannot charge them with conducting cybercrime. “During the inspection, we