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Chen’s trial unfair,
FAHR mission says
SEEKING TRUTH: A Taiwanese rights group
conducted a probe into the ex-president’s trial and incarceration which
concluded that his judicial process had been compromised
By Chris Wang / Staff reporter
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.
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