The Taiwan Civil Rights Litigation Organization has joined the Formosan Association for Public Affairs in calling for United Sates intervention in behalf of Chen Shui-bian. Chen, the imprisoned former President of the Republic of China in-exile, was recently hospitalized for a serious heart condition.
John Hsieh, chairman of TCRLO, appearing on Talk Tonight news program of KTSF television station in San Francisco on Thursday, called for the medical release of Chen to house arrest until a new fair trial can be held.
Chen, serving a lengthy prison term for alleged corruption involving so-called “soft money”, was convicted following a controversial trial that drew sharp criticism from the international academic community. One of the criticisms of Chen’s trial included an after-hours skit performed by courtroom personnel mocking Chen.
While confined to his small cell most of the time, Chen’s health has deteriorated in prison. During Chen’s trip to the hospital for his heart condition, Chen’s doctors disclosed to him he had been unknowingly doped with the drug lorazepan, a psychiatric medication.
FAPA director Mark Kao has called Chen’s treatment “inhumane” and is leading a petition drive asking Congress to get involved. The United States is the “principle occupying Power” of Taiwan under the San Francisco Peace Treaty that ended World War II with Japan.
Hsieh, in the televised interview, also discussed Chen’s status as a potential plaintiff under the Torture Victims Protection Act. Chen has once attempted to use an American court but was told the court had no jurisdiction. Chen had sought to appeal his ROC conviction to the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces.
Hsieh says that the United States has “unfinished business” in Taiwan helping the people to achieve self-determination. Hsieh has blamed Chen’s treatment on the unresolved international status of Taiwan that allows the exiled Nationalist Chinese government to control the island and its court system.
Hsieh is blunt with his criticism of existing U.S. foreign policy, “The current U.S. policy to Taiwan is nothing but helping evil to abuse Taiwanese people.”
In 2009, the District of Columbia U.S. Court of Appeals blamed the United States for the “political purgatory” of Taiwan and urged President Barack Obama to act “expeditiously” to resolve sovereignty of the island.
Taiwan, also called Formosa, is trapped in a “strategic ambiguity” that keeps it under an occupation government, out of the United Nations, and even banned from membership in the World Health Organization.
Because of the Chinese civil war that installed the People’s Republic of China in 1949, both the mainland Communists and the exiled Kuomintang regime claim the former Japanese island. Meanwhile, the island’s 23 million inhabitants, along with imprisoned Chen, continue to exist in political purgatory.
Source: Michael Richardson - Boston Progressive Examiner
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