Excerpt from Newsweek "Fallout from Chen Shui-Bian's Dramatic Arrest" by Melinda Liu
Such warnings have not just come from traditional DPP supporters. Last week, before Mr Chen’s arrest, twenty prominent international Asia specialists, including Professors Arthur Waldron of the University of Pennsylvania, Bruce Jacobs of Monash University and June Teufel Dreyer of the University of Miami, along with former Far Eastern Economic Review Taipei correspondent Julian Baum, issued an unprecedented open letter expressing “deep concern” at the behaviour of Taiwanese prosecutors. “It is obvious that there have been cases of corruption in Taiwan,” they wrote, “but these have occurred in both political camps.” The recent detentions, they said, had created an impression that the KMT authorities “are using the judicial system to get even with members of the former DPP government.” They accused prosecutors of “a basic violation of due process, justice and the rule of law,” by holding several detainees incommunicado without being charged, and of “trial by press” by leaking detrimental information to the media. They suggested that such actions were jeopardizing the achievements of Taiwan’s transition from one party rule (by the KMT) to democracy in the late 1980s and early 90s.
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