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Commissioner slams Yunlin prosecutors
¡¥IGNORANCE REIGNS SUPREME¡¦: After her acquittal
on corruption charges was upheld by the Supreme Court, Su Chih-fen said
prosecutors ¡¥wanted me dead¡¦
By Chen Hsu-kai and Jake Chung / Staff reporter, with Staff
writer
A cuffed Su Chih-fen raises her
hands in protest as she is being taken to a police car in Yunlin County on Nov.
10, 2008.
Photo: Chan Shih-hung, Taipei Times
One day after the Supreme Court denied a
prosecutors¡¦ appeal of Yunlin County Commissioner Su Chih-fen¡¦s (Ĭªvªâ) acquittal
on corruption charges, Su posted scathing comments on her Facebook describing
the Yunlin County Prosecutors¡¦ Office as cronies of an unjust government.
Su, a member of the Democratic Progressive Party, was in November 2008 charged
by prosecutors with accepting NT$5 million (US$151,000) in bribes to speed up
the approval of a landfill project in the county by skipping an environmental
assessment. The prosecutors had called for Su to be given a 15-year sentence and
an eight-year suspension of civil rights.
She was acquitted in the first and second ruling.
¡§The prosecutors¡¦ office sent seven prosecutors and indicted me as a felon on
charges of graft and corruption, asking for 15 years in prison and the removal
of my civil rights for eight years,¡¨ Su said in her Facebook post on Friday.
Su once led an 11-day hunger strike to protest against what she said was
political persecution.
¡§They mentioned my family and what they had contributed to the country during
the process of its democratization, but my parents and my younger brother were
all imprisoned wrongfully,¡¨ Su said. ¡§They wanted me dead; I would rather be
dead than hear them defile the name of my family with their mouths.¡¨
Su said that her father, Su Tung-chi (ĬªF±Ò), was taken away in the middle of
night during the White Terror era, when she was only eight years old.
The Martial Law era, which lasted from 1949 to 1987, served as a tool of the
government to oppress the people and the democracy movement then, and her
father¡¦s arrest was only the beginning of a long nightmare, Su wrote as she
listed the many torments her family had undergone.
Su said that during the past four years, she had never had a moment of peace and
she was heavy of heart because the unjust government ran unchecked, adding that
the many divisions within Taiwan¡¦s society and the inability of people to come
to terms filled the nation with despair.
¡§The Taiwan I have seen in the past four years is one where ignorance reigns
supreme and the enlightenment of a solution is hard to find,¡¨ Su wrote, adding
that the burden the nation bore was saddening.
In response to her post, a number of netizens voiced their support for Su,
thanking her family for the sacrifices they made for the democratization of
Taiwan while some called her brave, even branding her ¡§Taiwan¡¦s Aung San Suu Kyi.¡¨
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