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Solutions, not semantics, needed
Monday, May 31, 2010, Page 8
Women-only train cars, Terry Gou (郭台銘) and the death penalty
may not appear to have much in common, but recent comments by officials offering
facile excuses highlight the quandary facing public policy in Taiwan.
After another alleged sexual assault on a train, the Taiwan Railway
Administration (TRA) said on Friday it would prioritize the first car on 256
commuter trains that depart before 7am and after 9:30pm for women and girls.
However, a senior TRA official was quick to say that the first car would not be
designated “women only” because the TRA doesn’t want to discriminate against
men.
This implies that the TRA wants to be seen as pro-active, while not actually
doing anything concrete to remedy the situation. This sounds much like the
response to the recent wave of suicides to hit Foxconn Technology’s Shenzhen
complex.
While Terry Gou, chairman of Foxconn’s parent Hon Hai Precision Industry (鴻海),
responded with pay raises, the erection of safety nets and the hiring of mental
health counselors, the government responded by voicing concern for Gou. Premier
Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) said Gou deserved encouragement because he is under a lot of
pressure and has done a lot for the economy.
Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) said the government should contact
authorities in China to help deal with the situation, adding: “It’s the least
the government can do.”
Least being the operative word here. Which brings us to capital punishment.
On Friday, the Ministry of Justice pronounced itself satisfied with a ruling by
the Constitutional Court, which found that executing death row prisoners does
not violate the two UN covenants Taiwan signed because the defendants are given
the opportunity to defend themselves during the trial process.
What the Constitutional Court did not do, however, was actually review any of
the 40 death row cases, some of which date back decades and have raised serious
questions about the presumption of guilt.
Amendments to the Code of Criminal Procedure (刑事訴訟法) in 2002 gave Taiwan a
modified adversarial system, with defendants in a criminal case gaining new
rights to present their side of a case. Many of the death row cases date to
before 2002, when judges acted as both prosecutor and judge. Despite the changes
that give a defendant the presumption of innocence and require evidence of guilt
for a guilty verdict, these requirements are clearly missing in several death
row cases.
In addition, defendants facing serious criminal charges are still not entitled
to public defenders in hearings before the Supreme Court.
The ability of defense attorneys to review records of the questioning sessions
has also been problematic, despite a 1997 regulation stipulating full-length
audio-visual recordings be made when prosecutors are questioning the accused. In
one prominent death row case, audiotapes of the suspects’ interrogations do
exist — complete with the sounds of torture that led to several policemen being
convicted of torture and lying to the court. However, those tapes still form the
basis of the convictions in the case, despite the lack of any forensic evidence.
Following the Constitutional Court ruling, Minister of Justice Tseng Yung-fu
(曾勇夫) said there was no timetable for more executions, although such dates would
be based on the gravity of the crimes. Once again, he ignored the primary
rationale behind the unofficial stay of execution that had been in place for
four years: That serious, critical questions about the merit of many of the
convictions require that these inmates not be put to death.
In each of the examples cited above, public pressure required the authorities to
be seen to do something — and quickly. In each case, the officials glossed over
the actual situations that created the problems. This is no way to create public
policy.
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