Martial Laws and Marred Reporting

UPDATE: Now updated with massively awesome Taiwan News editorial on the law....see bottom. Lately their editorials have been fantastic....

First all, I had a letter to the editor in the Taipei Times today in which I stated that the term "martial law" should never have crossed Chen Shui-bian's lips. I was wrong; it hadn't. My bad, because I didn't fact-check enough. What actually happened is that several people had made several suggestions, including martial law, to deal with the KMT's refusal to implement CEC-mandated election regulations. Chen merely said he was considering all alternatives, which the media immediately blew up into a claim that Chen had said he was thinking of using martial law. It was not as dumb as I thought, but still not wise. So disregard everything I wrote on my blog.

Plenty of other action went on with martial law recently. What's the new draft bill on the 2-28 compensation that the DPP has going? It's the end of the world, according to the pro-KMT China Post:

Democratic Progressive Party lawmakers are all set to start the first reading of a bill on compensation for victims of the Feb. 28 Incident of 1947 and the reign of the white terror that followed.

They may face a boycott by their Kuomintang colleagues when they begin acting this morning on the bill they have often proposed but failed to get on the agenda.

If passed, the bill requires relatives of the dead persecutors to stand trial for the crimes they know nothing of.

No law in the world compels relatives to be litigated for the crimes committed by the dead.

That's why the bill, sponsored by Wang Hsing-nan and endorsed by his 33 colleagues, has never gotten a chance to be acted on.

The irony of Wang Hsing-nan, former letter bomber, leading a charge for compensation, was not lost on the KMT, as the Post indignantly reported:

"If you have your way," [KMT legislator] Hsieh told Wang Hsing-nan, "you may be sued by Hsieh Meng-hsiung." Hsieh Meng-hsiung, a well-known gynecologist, is the son of Hsieh Tung-min, a former governor of Taiwan and vice president under Chiang Ching-kuo.

The ex-governor had one hand blasted off by a letter bomb Wang Hsing-nan mailed from the United States in October 1976.

"If you excuse yourself, shouldn't your wife appear in court to defend you?" Hsieh asked.

In fact, three packages, each containing a Chinese dictionary hollowed out for explosives, were sent from the United States. The two other recipients were Lee Huan, a top Kuomintang official, and Huang Chieh, minister of defense.

Lee had fingers burnt. Huang was spared.

For the terrorist attacks, Wang was finally induced to come back to Taiwan to stand trial. Police had detained Wang's relatives in Taiwan to force him to return.

In one respect Wang is totally different from all the people who murdered for the KMT: he went to jail. Meanwhile the pro-Green Taipei Times gave a completely different take:

Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wang Sing-nan (王幸男), who, along with caucus whip Wang Tuoh (王拓), Legislator Wang Shih-cheng (王世堅) and 30 other DPP legislators, initiated the legislation, said that the proposal was about clearing up White Terror incidents through judicial processes and learning how officials from the former government had oppressed citizens.

Wang said the proposal stipulates that relatives of those responsible would represent their family members by attending the hearings and that they would enjoy legal rights and be protected from bearing criminal responsibility for the acts of the deceased.

The DPP legislative caucus yesterday held a press conference to make the details of the proposal public.

Wang Tuoh said the facts about the killings would only be learned through investigations and that because many documents related to killings that took place during that period have been classified as confidential, the DPP had no choice but to come up with the proposal to facilitate the investigations.

Wang Tuoh said the relatives of those responsible would attend the hearing and be confronted by victims' families, but would not be expected to assume criminal responsibility.

Any way you slice it, someone is misrepresenting. The China Post reported on why the bill was permitted to come up for a reading -- and gave a little insight into why Ma cannot move toward Taiwan's pro-independence mainstream -- remember, this is published in the pro-KMT paper:

Kuomintang leaders think the DPP move is going to backfire.

In fact, they believe the bill will help them recover the support of hardcore unification supporters, most of them mainlanders, who had been disenchanted by the Kuomintang's call for a referendum on Taiwan's return to the United Nations as the Republic of China.

The DPP wants a referendum on Taiwan's admission to the United Nations as Taiwan. Both referendums will take place alongside the presidential election, scheduled for March 22.

These disenchanted Kuomintang supporters are likely to boycott the election, because they think Ma is moving closer to the DPP policy line of creeping independence for Taiwan.

Perhaps that is the reason why the Kuomintang let the Wang bill get on the agenda of yesterday's sabotaged judicial committee meeting.

Wang introduced the bill on Oct. 5. It was turned down. A week later, on Oct. 12, it was introduced again.

Knowing it won't be passed by any chance, the Kuomintang let Wang get the bill on the agenda in his second try.

"We purposely let Wang win the other day," claimed a Kuomintang heavyweight, who declined to be named.

Whose reporting is correct? I have no idea, without the text of the draft bill.

UPDATE: The KMT distortion machine has been really busy with this one. Taiwan News with another kickass editorial:


EDITORIAL

'State crimes' bill merits support

Taiwan News
Page 5
2007-12-04 02:55 AM

We urge all political parties to support passage of a draft special law that would provide a legal channel to expedite the determination of legal responsibility of state crimes committed during the decades of "white terror" under the KMT authoritarian regime.

Besides the estimated more than 10,000 persons who were slaughtered by KMT forces during the suppression of the February 28 Incident of 1947, there were close to 29,000 cases of political imprisonment under the KMT martial law regime in which 140,000 persons suffered, of whom up to 4,000 were executed, according to the official "Foundation for the Compensation of Improper Verdicts of Sedition and Communist Espionage."

Despite progress in opening official files and securing compensation for victims or their survivors, Taiwan's history remains one in which there are tens of thousands of victims but not one identified victimizer.

Introduced earlier this year by the Democratic Progressive Party's legislative caucus, the draft "Special Law on the Determination of Responsibility for Government Illegalities during the February 28th Incident (of 1947) and the Martial Law Period" was slated to be reviewed in the Legislative Yuan's Committee on Judicial Affairs yesterday, but met with a passive boycott by KMT lawmakers and a concerted campaign of distortion by KMT leaders and by pro-KMT print and electronic media.

On Sunday, the KMT legislators offered a number of excuses to justify their plan not to allow the committee meeting to be held, including claims that the former ruling party "has already shown the greatest sincerity and made the greatest efforts to compensate" victims and charges that the draft DPP bill aimed to "execute nine generations of paternal and maternal relatives" for the alleged actions of perpetrators of the KMT "white terror."

One KMT lawmaker even declared that the "green terror" allegedly imposed under the seven and half years of DPP governance has been "over 10 times worse" than the four decades of KMT "white terror."

KMT presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou, who has a doctorate in law from Harvard University and served as justice minister, said the draft bill was a "manifestation of hatred" that "violated the spirit of reconciliation and coexistence" promoted by his DPP counterpart, former Premier and human rights lawyer Frank Hsieh.

Regretfully, few of the KMT leaders, legislators or media "mouths" who have claimed that this bill aimed to launch a "liquidation" campaign, stir up ethnic hatred or "manipulate '228'" bothered to look at what the draft special law actually states.

Truth, responsibility, forgiveness

Essentially, the draft special law aims to realize the aspirations of thousands of surviving victims or their relatives and Taiwan's human rights community for the formation of a legally grounded "truth commission" to clarify the history of state repression, determine responsibility and open the door for reconciliation.

The draft bill clearly defines the use of state power to "illegally arrest, persecute, sentence, abuse, torture or murder" citizens as a special type of "government illegality" that requires special procedures that target the clarification of truth and the determination of criminal responsibility.

In keeping with the realization that ordinary legal concepts cannot be effectively applied to the crimes of a dictatorship, Article Four would set aside the maximum 20-year statute of limitations on criminal offenses embodied in the criminal code and expunge the ban incorporated into Article 9 Section Two of the draconian National Security Law of July 1, 1987 that has blocked the filing of appeals by victims or their survivors to martial law era military court judgments.

The same article mandates that trials of persons indicted for committing such crimes will not be halted if the defendant has died, but states that the court should instead "order the defendant's spouse, descendent or third-level family members" to "continue the proceedings and substitute for the defendants in executing their rights under the Law of Criminal Procedure."

Although this clause is now the focus of controversy, it is obvious that its purpose is to provide descendants or close relatives of deceased, alleged victims, such as the late KMT dictator Chiang Kai-shek himself, the chance to defend the innocence and reputation of the defendant in court and is absolutely not intended to subject the descendants of alleged victimizers to the same type of discriminatory treatment or persecution suffered by survivors of martial law victims.

The draft law would allow the two foundations that have provided "compensation" or "reparations" for "228" and white terror "improper verdicts" to file suit for reparations from guilty parties, but does not state that direct descendants or other family members will be held responsible for such obligations.

If passed, the law would require the Executive Yuan to form an independent task force under the supreme public prosecutor to pursue legal responsibility for government crimes committed during the "228" Incident or the "white terror" and mandate that the Judicial Yuan establish a special court to hear cases arising from indictments filed by the new task force.

The draft law would also set aside restrictions imposed by the national secrets law or the archives law on the access to prosecutors of historical files or documents held by any government office.

The draft law implicitly would also provide full justification for prosecutors to file for court warrants to secure access to related documents in the KMT party archives, the opening of which is essential for both the clarification of truth and identification of responsibility.

In our view, the DPP should be chided for not introducing this legislation long ago, but we also believe that the bill cannot be justly accused of "manifesting hatred."

Instead, the draft bill has the potential to provide a legally-grounded path to promote reconciliation and ethnic harmony by allowing the judicial system to clarify the fact that most Taiwan citizens of mainlander ancestry or "new immigrants" were not responsible for the commission of crimes by the party-state which were directed and carried out by relatively few of the KMT leaders under the orders of Chiang and his son, Ching-kuo.

Even if Ma cannot grasp the importance of this bill, we hope that KMT Chairman Wu Po-hsiung can show the political wisdom to support a draft law that can finally allow him to realize justice for his uncle, Taiwan High Court Justice Wu Hung-lin, who was butchered by KMT troops in the 228 Incident.

[Taiwan]