Case No. 1: A young man standing between police and demonstrators during the visit of Chen Yunlin last year was dragged behind the police lines by officers who then proceeded to beat him up. After taking the case to court, the presiding judge claimed since the victim was unable to identify which police officers had assaulted him, charges could not be applied. This now neatly provides the precedent for two possible outcomes: a) that police in numbers can just beat people up and because it is difficult to ID ten people who are identically dressed, wearing helmets and thrashing you with sticks it means they can be assured that they won't be penalised later. b) all protesters need to do now is to wear masks (can we order a few thousand V masks for Yunlin's visit in December?) so police cannot identify who is hitting them. I do not advocate violence against officers but if said officers are willfully breaking the law and abusing their powers, then a citizen has every right to defend themselves from violence and arbitrary arrest. Here's the video of the man being beaten by police: (at the 0:16 seconds mark)
Case No. 2: Su Jian-her and two other co-defendants have been living with a death sentence for nearly 20 years (Hsichih Trio) for a crime in which there was zero evidence that they were present or directly involved. Shortly after the crime, they found a former military man whose footprint and fingerprint matched that found at the crime scene. He was executed shortly after by a military tribunal. His brother, in order one suspects to lighten his own sentence, 'ratted' on three others, one of which was Mr. Su. Mr Su and the other were sentenced again to death in 2007 with the prosecutor's strongest 'evidence' being that because there was no evidence of the three people's involvement, this was itself evidence that they meticulously planned the robbery and murder and cleaned up afterwards. E.G. No proof equals proof of premeditation. Mr. Su was sentenced to death five times by five different judges, none of which wished to see the murder weapon in court or discuss if such a weapon was even used. Mr. Su is free pending process of latest appeal.
... he was arrested on Thursday for drawing a picture that depicted President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) having sexual intercourse with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The painter had remained relatively unknown for the last 13 years despite depicting many politicians in obscene drawings. Taipei County Councilor King Chieh-shou (金介壽) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) recently received a postcard from Lin showing the image of Ma and Clinton.Now, does anyone else feel that police arresting Mr. Lin for his art has echos of the Martial Law era? The police, for their part, have egg all over their faces on this one:
After investigating, Taipei County police said Lin had also drawn crude pictures of former presidents Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) and Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁). Lin told the media he would have sent the postcards straight to the police had he known he would have received so much media attention over them.
The postcard King received depicted Ma standing on two bricks having sexual intercourse with Clinton using jiujiu shengong (九九神功)a method of qigong (氣功)in which practitioners hang and lift heavy objects such as bricks with their genitals.
King reported the matter to the police, saying that the postcards were insulting to the president. Lin was arrested by within 24 hours. Police said they found and confiscated two original sketches of the picture, postcards and a list of names of well-known people that Lin uses in his artworks.
The police originally thought Lin was a political extremist obsessed with politics, but later discovered that his works have also used Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) and the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibet as subjects and are now at a loss as to what Lin intends with these illustrations.I for one will be paying close attention to further police action against those they suspect of being 'political extremists' (anyone who disagrees with Government policy?). There is a saying the the law is an ass. In Taiwan, the law is a tool, despite the efforts of lawyers and judicial personnel who were some of the greaters drivers and contributors towards Taiwan's transformation from dictatorship to democracy.
From other works confiscated, the police could tell that Lin was a painter because of the fine detail of his work. (This made me laugh as it immediately conjured up the image of police officers standing around a picture and intently discussing the artistic merits of Lin's work - "but is it art?", "yes, look at the fine brush strokes reminiscent of Van Gogh") The police also discovered that Lin’s name is registered in a cultural database kept by the Council for Cultural Affairs and that Lin had staged exhibitions of his works in 1993 and 2001, all on the subject of jiujiu shengong.
After questioning, the police charged Lin with “offenses against sexual morality (妨害風化罪).” The police added the people depicted in the pictures could sue Lin if they feel their rights have been damaged.
