A college professor, Tsay Ting-kuei “Aquia”, is chairman of the Alliance of Referendum for Taiwan. Aquia Tsay also helps lead the Taiwan Justice Rescue Force and has taken Chen Shui-bian’s case to the streets. The imprisoned Chen is the former president of the Republic of China in-exile jailed by his successor Ma Ying-jeou for alleged corruption. Aquia granted an on-the-spot interview at Democracy Camp in Taipei.
Democracy Camp was a four-day encampment outside the presidential office building where the Taiwan independence movement gathered. The camp was the culmination of a month-long march around the island by members of the Taiwan Justice Rescue Force to bring attention to the case of Chen Shui-bian.
“President Chen did not get a fair trial, not at all. I think this case is political persecution from the beginning. So we who disagree with the court sentence, we come together to try to rescue Chen from jail. He is now in the hospital but in jail they did not give him medical treatment at all. Under pressure he has been moved from the jail to a veterans hospital,” said Aquia.
“In their mind they want to put President Chen in their confinement until he is dead.”
Aquia said: “We believe Abian’s case is judicial dictatorship, even before the trial they changed judges. After so many years they still cannot find evidence to support their trial. They hired somebody from Japan [Jeffery Koo, Jr.] to give fake evidence and this guy admits he was under pressure to make a statement against President Chen. With everything in the trial process we believe this was a set-up for a political reason.”
“There is no jury trial system,” complained Aquia, listing juries as one of the goals of the Alliance of Referendum for Taiwan. The primary goal of the Alliance group is self-determination for Taiwan.
Aquia said: “The prosecutor decides if they want to try or not. Then when they send the case to the court, only judges will decide guilty or not guilty. We wish that after we bring down the judicial dictatorship then we will set up a new jury trial system as we have observed in the United States. We think that is more fair and more democratic and average people can participate. Then the judicial system will not be controlled by a small group of people.”
Aquia elaborated that he was an eyewitness to misbehavior in the courtroom, “I attended President Chen’s trial several times and with my own eyes saw the Red Team harassment of Chen.” Court watcher Jennifer Cheng previously reported courtroom harassment of Chen Shui-bian during recesses by two women dressed in red.
“We are trying to save the life of President Chen.”
“Right now we encounter two big obstacles,” said Aquia. “One is the judicial dictatorship and the other one is the monopoly of the media. The media is totally controlled by the government so the people have to work harder, very hard to bring up the issues for society to be aware.”
“We believe that President Chen has been put into jail because he believes that China and Taiwan are separate individual countries. Taiwan is not part of China. We believe that President Chen, even though he was the president of the ROC exiled government, he is Taiwanese. He knows that Taiwanese have to be the real masters of Taiwan,” said Aquia.
“We don’t want to be controlled by the Chinese Communist Party,” exclaimed Aquia. “The Chinese Communist Party is angry, he is the leader of Taiwanese, and so they put President Chen into jail to scare most of the Taiwanese people. That is the strategy they are using, so we hope that the American people will understand President Chen didn’t do anything wrong because in the four years President Chen has been jailed the dictatorial judicial system could not find any evidence against President Chen.”
“It is really a political prosecution.”
Source: Michael Richardson - Boston Progressive Examiner
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