The Ridiculous Open Window of “Equal Justice Before the Law” Created by Obvious Lances and Hidden Arrows

 The Ridiculous Open Window of “Equal Justice Before the Law” Created by Obvious Lances and Hidden Arrows

United Daily News Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

October 24, 2019

 Translation of an Excerpt

The handling of Hong Kong murder suspect Chan Tong-kai by the Tsai government, from the unified version of rejecting his offer to surrender by the various ministries, to the later declaration saying "if Hong Kong does not try him, let’s do it", we could see the clumsy flip-flopping and illogic, but now it is finally in the right direction. Despite this, if the two sides, Taiwan and Hong Kong, want to help complete Chan Tong-kai’s surrendering, it still faces multiple difficulties. Our side wants to dispatch prosecutors and police officers to Hong Kong to place Chan Tong-kai under custody during the trip to Taiwan, which was immediately opposed by the Hong Kong government with a slap in the face, indicating that it could not accept "cross-border enforcement of law." The Mainland Affairs Council under the Cabinet subsequently retorted, saying that if the suspect should flee, the Hong Kong side must shoulder full responsibility. After the tit for tat, following Chan Tong-kai’s release from prison yesterday, his name also once appeared on the passenger manifest of an EVA Air flight, nevertheless he did not board the plane for surrendering in Taiwan, creating an open window for justice.

The Tsai government’s National Security staff bragged, saying that the government had prepared “three stage scripts” from the onset, starting from the principle of mutual legal assistance in judicial matters as the bottom line and arresting Chan Tung-kai “once he set foot on Taiwan”. The words were well-spoken, but if three scripts had already been prepared, why was the actual stage performance so off-key? What is even more bewildering is that as early as a month ago, Huang Cheng-kuo, a national policy adviser to the President, had accompanied Rev. Peter Koon, Chan Tong-ai’s pastor, to call on Interior Minister Hsu Kuo-yung, exchanging views on this issue. Whether or not Hsu Kuo-yung knew at the time that Rev. Peter Koon had another capacity of a "delegate to the Beijing National Political Consultative Conference", the government had a full month time to prepare the scripts. However, the Premier and Cabinet members all acted as if they were "temporary understudies". The persuasiveness of such governance is too weak to say the least.

Chan Tong-kai was released from prison yesterday, but handicapped by calculations of political offense and defense between Hong Kong and Taiwan, he still could not successfully board the plane to surrender himself in Taiwan. The Hong Kong government refused our request to dispatch prosecutors and police officers to place Chan under custody for his possible trip to Taiwan; besides the issue of so-called “cross-border enforcement of law”, the principal reason is that Chan Tong-kai has become a free man after his release from prison, so the Hong Kong government could not restrict his movements. Once adopting the mode of handling and receiving Chan by prosecutors and police officers of Hong Kong and Taiwan, it could possibly create a question of going against his “free will”. A better approach would be allowing him to be accompanied by his pastor or a reliable figure to Taiwan, and at the airport immigration counter, state his wishes for surrendering himself to law enforcement officers, who then proceed to arrest him. The premise is that the Interior Ministry has to rescind restrictions on his entry. All these needed prior communication.

Because of too many political calculations, the ridiculous open window of criminal justice had appeared for a suspect in a heinous offence to become a free man after being released from prison. Although Tsai Ing-wen has picked up a handful of political guns in the marches and demonstrations over the amendment bill to the “Fugitive Offenders Ordinance”, undermining the judicial jurisdiction on which the Republic of China should insist will inevitably explode, harming herself.

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