上面是媒抗的部分中文翻釋,下面是英文版原文
http://www.truenews.cc/ftalk/portal.php?news=5&sid=4265359a7c7510dc9e...
The trials of Ah-Bian
阿扁的司法審判
經濟學人，The Economist print edition
Sep 17th 2009
說明：911後陳水扁案的文章俯拾即是，《經濟學人》也接連發了2篇，這篇仍維持抨擊司法體系與國民黨的基調
。修伯特去除陳水扁政治生涯與對中國的影響部分，僅節錄「司法體系瑕疵」之部分，請見諒。陳水扁案至今滿一星期
，我們要堅決主張司法人權，更應該關切各項重大發展：賭博、採礦、無力的經濟、中國的政經兩手策略、日本的戰略轉
變等，放寬眼界，我們的母親之島會更好。
審判台灣前總統是創舉；但司法瑕疵令人蒙羞。
譯註：修伯特不能同意這句話更多！
操作(handling)審判也引起關切。從好處想，部分司法制度仍陷入昔日的陳苛；從壞處想，司法制度再次受到國民黨的命令。
主要的憂慮是，審判前和審判時拘留陳水扁，包括一個月的單人囚室。沒有人可合理解釋，為什麼釋放陳水扁的法官會被更換，那時國民黨政治人物疾聲抗議。新
任法官蔡守訓馬上再次拘留陳水扁。蔡守訓之前正好審判過馬英九任內濫用特別費的案件，那時宣判馬英九無罪，僅判助手（余文）1年刑期。
陳水扁的助理分別被判20年（馬永成）與16年（林德訓），他們宣稱這是國民黨與馬英九合奏的政治仇殺。這難以維繫哈佛律師馬英九的清白形象，也引出台
灣距離法治民主有多遠的問題。責難司法體系審判瑕疵更有理的說法是，從獨裁統治下貪贓枉法與順從（國民黨），不完美地跳躍到司法獨立與正當程序。台灣法
官─檢察官一體在6年前才被打破，取代的是公正的法官要聽完控訴與辯護雙方論點的體系。蔡守訓審判期間對陳水扁公開的敵意，讓人想到某些舊的態度難以被
撼動。
檢察官巨大的權力，包括審問個人而不讓他們知道什麼被記錄了，仍是民主的污點。檢察官在年度晚會演出陳水扁抗議戴上手銬的諷刺劇，也讓人蒙羞；政府則裝
聾作啞。因陳水扁辯護律師鄭文龍質疑審判程序的公平性，法務部長遂威脅要取消其律師資格。馬英九老師、現任紐約大學教授孔傑榮(Jerome
Cohen)說，這些動作打了中國人權律師一巴掌。
你對未來台灣法律的結論，決定於你認為審判陳水扁有沒有政治動機。若沒有，在其總統任內調查與卸任後的審判，無疑是個里程碑。而且，司法體系正回應審判
的缺點。舉例而言，由於陳水扁的挑戰，檢察官要參加和紀錄被告與辯護人之間會面的堅決主張，已經被宣告違反憲法。
譯註：就個人觀點來說，欣見於法律之前人人平等的里程碑，這或許是陳水扁案的正面成果。
http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14456921
Sep 17th 2009
From The Economist print edition
Bringing Taiwan’s former president to trial is ground-breaking. A
shame about the judicial flaws
Illustration by M. MorgensternA DRAMA that has transfixed Taiwan came
to a head on September 11th when Chen Shui-bian, president from 2000
to 2008, was sentenced to life in jail for embezzlement, money-
laundering and bribe-taking. A life sentence was also given to his
crippled wife. This is not the end of the saga, for a long appeals
process stretches ahead. Still, bringing a former leader to book is
unprecedented for Taiwan. It is, indeed, an inspiring first in Chinese
history for a toppled ruler to be punished by the law rather than the
mob. So more’s the pity that the achievement is marred by flaws in the
legal system that Mr Chen’s trial has highlighted.
A quick reminder of the plot to date. During the “White Terror” of the
Kuomintang (KMT) dictatorship, Wu Shu-chen, a beauty from a well-to-do
family, falls for the idealism of a poor tenant-farmer’s son,
nicknamed Ah-Bian, who has put his precocious talents as a lawyer into
the fight for justice, human rights and democracy. She pays a physical
price, when one day at a rally she is hit by a farm truck that runs
back and forth three times over her legs. KMT hitmen may have been
responsible. She is confined for life to a wheelchair.
Ah-Bian redoubles his battle against dictatorship and corruption.
Opposition efforts begin to bear fruit, and democracy comes to Taiwan.
In 2000 Ah-Bian himself wins the presidency as head of the Democratic
Progressive Party (DPP), overturning the KMT’s half-century of power.
He furthers Taiwan’ s democratisation, always controversially, by
restructuring governing institutions and shaping a Taiwanese identity
that stands out from mainland China’s. But this lifetime fighter
against corruption proves to be very corrupt by any standards—except
possibly the past KMT’s.
It has taken three years since the first real whiff of scandal for Mr
Chen’s followers to face up to the scale on which their man has let
them down. The DPP has felt the trauma in emotional and electoral
terms. As for Mr Chen’s psychology, it is a story worthy of great
tragedy. Friends say that high office made a humble man arrogant. They
also emphasise his family’s suffering. In franker moments Mr Chen
confessed to abiding guilt over Miss Wu’s disability. His wife seems
to have played on this: didn’t she deserve a few jewels the size of
boulders? At heart, this has been Mr Chen’s justification in his few
expressions of public remorse, though former supporters think he has
not apologised enough.
Yet, for all the revulsion with Mr Chen, the handling of his trial has
also raised concerns. At best, many say, the judiciary has one foot
stuck in the bad old days. At worst, it takes its orders from the KMT,
now back in power.
The main worry has to do with Mr Chen’s detention before and during
the trial, including a month in solitary confinement. No one has
properly explained why, after the presiding judge freed Mr Chen from
pre-trial detention (to loud protests by KMT politicians), the judge
was replaced. The new judge, Tsai Shou-hsun, promptly detained Mr Chen
again. Mr Tsai happens to have presided over an earlier trial of Ma
Ying-jeou of the KMT, now Mr Chen’s successor as president, who was
accused of abusing political funds when he was mayor of Taipei in ways
that recall Mr Chen’s case. But Mr Tsai acquitted Mr Ma, and gave an
aide involved in the abuse a year in jail.
Mr Chen’s supporters, pointing to his life sentence, and to the 20-
and 16-year sentences meted out respectively to two of his aides,
claim a political vendetta by the KMT, orchestrated by Mr Ma. That
would hardly be in keeping with the clean-guy image of Mr Ma, a
Harvard-trained lawyer. It would also throw into question how far
Taiwan has really come as a law-based democracy. But it is more
plausible to blame the trial’s flaws on a legal system that has only
imperfectly made the leap from being venal and biddable under
dictatorship towards judicial independence and due process. Six years
ago Taiwan’s judge-prosecutors were replaced by a system in which
impartial judges are meant to hear out the case for the prosecution
and the defence. Mr Tsai’s open hostility to Mr Chen during the trial
suggests some old-school attitudes are hard to shake off.
What is more, prosecutors’ immense powers, including the practice of
interrogating an individual without letting him know what he is said
to have done, remain a blot on democracy. Shameful too was the skit
performed at the prosecutors’ annual dinner in which mockery was made
of Mr Chen famously protesting at the humiliation of having to wear
handcuffs. No rebuke came from the government. Now the justice
ministry threatens to disbar Mr Chen’s lawyer, Cheng Wen-lung, for
questioning the fairness of the judicial process. That smacks, says
Jerome Cohen, Mr Ma’s former law professor, now at New York
University, of the persecution of human-rights lawyers in China.
Drawing the right conclusions
What conclusions you draw about the future rule of law in Taiwan
depend on whether you believe Mr Chen’ s trial was politically
motivated or not. If not—and the investigation of Mr Chen, after all,
began when he was still president—then the trial of a former president
is surely a landmark. What is more, the legal system is responding to
the trial’s shortcomings. For instance, thanks to a challenge by Mr
Chen, the prosecutors’ insistence that they attend and record meetings
between defendants and their counsel has now been ruled
unconstitutional.
More telling, the KMT is looking anew at the whole business of murky
political funds which the reforming Mr Chen should have addressed as a
cancer on democracy, but instead dipped into. And most telling of all
is China’s official reaction to the downfall of an enemy loathed for
his embrace of Taiwanese independence. The reaction has been very
nearly mute. After all, to cheer Taiwan’s pursuit of a corrupt leader
might encourage China’s own citizens to draw all the wrong inferences
about what should happen to their own rulers.
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司法迫害,台灣馬英九,阿扁,國民黨,獨裁統治
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