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Wrongfully accused ex-NSC official
speaks on justice
By Huang Chien-hua and Jake Chung / Staff reporter, with Staff
writer
Former National Science Council
official Shieh Ching-jyh gestures during an interview on Friday in Greater
Kaohsiung.
Photo: Huang Chien-hua, Taipei Times
Former National Science Council official
Shieh Ching-jyh (謝清志), who was acquitted of corruption charges after a
five-and-a-half-year judicial ordeal, said he was neither surprised nor happy at
the court ruling declaring him innocent and called for the judicial system to
avoid becoming a tool for political administrations.
Shieh made the remarks in an interview with the Chinese-language Liberty Times
(the Taipei Times’ sister paper) on Friday.
Shieh in December 2006 was indicted on corruption charges for allegedly
collaborating with a private company to profit from a construction project. He
was accused of helping his friend, Hsu Hung-chang (許鴻章), win a contract for a
construction project in an industrial park in Tainan to reduce vibrations from
the high-speed rail (HSR) affecting the park. The project was initiated to
address the concerns of high-tech companies in an industrial zone next to the
railway track who feared that tremors from passing trains could damage their
products.
Shieh was acquitted of all charges in the re-trial of the first trial held at
the High Court’s Tainan branch on July 11, and on the basis of the Fair and
Speedy Criminal Trials Act (刑事妥速審判法), the prosecutors decided not to appeal the
ruling.
The act stipulates that unless the rulings of the first and second trials are
against the law or unconstitutional, prosecutors have to abide by the first and
second rulings if they are the same and may not appeal to the Supreme Court for
a third trial.
Shieh said on Friday that the many earthquakes that have happened over the past
six years have proved that the anti-vibration construction for the high-speed
rail works.
Looking back, Shieh said that most of the companies in the park were worried the
vibration of the high-speed trains would affect the quality of their products,
with some even backing out of their leases and setting up in Singapore.
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) had not taken care of the problem for seven
years, so the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co had written to the National
Science Council after the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) took over the
presidency in 2000, Shieh said.
Shieh said that despite all the effort he had expended in the project, he was
still accused of a crime that had not only seen him detained for 59 days, but
also besmirched his name.
Shieh said he was thankful to all the family members and friends that had cared
for and encouraged him while he had been imprisoned, adding that “in comparison
to the people jailed for decades over the Kaohsiung Incident or former president
Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), who is still behind bars, I’m pretty lucky.”
Born in Cigu District (七股), Greater Tainan, the 70 year-old Shieh received his
PhD in aerospace engineering at the University of Michigan and had worked at the
Rockwell Automation as a guidance and control analyst prior to his return to
Taiwan.
After his return, Shieh became the nation’s main promoter of aerospace
technology, presiding over the launch division when the Formosat-I satellite —
formerly known as ROCSAT-1 — was launched in 1999 by Lockheed-Martin at Cape
Canaveral Air Base, and was also on the planning committee for Formosat-3.
Speaking of the future, Shieh said he would retain the same hopes he had in 1995
when he returned to Taiwan: that Taiwan’s judiciary system would improve and
there would be no more wrongful imprisonment.
Shieh added that he hoped the judicial system would not be relegated to the
status of a tool that just serve whichever administration was in power.
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