March 19-25
China
The Chinese Communist Party announced a national Education and Rectification Campaign (全国纪检监察干部队伍教育整顿) directed at cadres in the party and state discipline inspection and national supervision organs, which lead anti-corruption work. It established a campaign leading group and held a kickoff meeting. A similar campaign was launched in 2021 targeting judges, prosecutors, and police, with the goal of weeding out disloyal or corrupt officials.
Chinese authorities raided the office of an American corporate investigations firm, the Mintz Group, detained five Chinese employees, and halted its operations. The company said it has not been able to contact the employees since their detention. The government has not responded to requests for comment.
The new head of the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, Ying Yong, convened a meeting of senior procurators to revise and improve the key evaluation indicators for the quality of case handling. He stressed the need to combine qualitative and quantitative indicators and warned against over-prioritizing or fabricating the indicators.
The Beijing Internet Court released five so-called “typical cases” about consumer disputes involving online purchases through live streaming marketing platforms. The court has handled more than 300 cases of this type in the past three years. About 40% were resolved through settlements or judicial mediation.
Hong Kong
Three leaders of the group that formerly organized mass vigils to mark the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown have appealed their conviction for refusing to comply with a data demand from national security police. Chow Hang-tung, Tang Ngok-kwan, and Tsui Hon-kwong, former standing committee members of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, were sentenced earlier in March to four-and-a-half months in jail.
The national security police questioned four former members of the now-disbanded Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions for several hours on March 22 and reportedly seized their computers and cell phones. Earlier this month, police arrested the confederation’s former chief executive, Elizabeth Tang, on suspicion of foreign collusion.
National security police took former Democratic Party chair Albert Ho back into custody after a magistrate ruled that he had violated his bail conditions. Details could not be reported due to official reporting restrictions. Ho is awaiting trial on a charge of inciting subversion.
A magistrate sentenced three men to five to ten months in prison after they pleaded guilty to selling copies of a “seditious book” at a Lunar New Year fair. They included Alan Keung, founder of independent outlet Free HK Media. Prosecutors said the book accused Hong Kong police of condoning triad activities, making up stories, and disregarding the law.
The chair of the Equal Opportunities Commission said he hopes to amend existing racial discrimination laws to bar discrimination against mainland Chinese in Hong Kong. Ricky Chu said that a person’s homeland or residential identity could be included among the protected categories.
The government introduced a much-anticipated bill into the Legislative Council to create a procedure for determining whether overseas lawyers not admitted to the Hong Kong bar may be allowed to represent clients in national security cases. The government said the overriding principle is that an overseas lawyer must not be admitted in national security cases unless Hong Kong’s chief executive has sufficient grounds for believing that the lawyer’s acting in the case does not involve national security or would not be contrary to national security interests.
Japan
The Tokyo High Public Prosecutors Office acquiesced in the Tokyo High Court’s decision to allow a retrial for an 87-year-old man who spent nearly 50 years in prison - much of it in solitary confinement on death row - for the 1966 murder of four people. The case has been pingponging among different levels of courts since 2014 due to appeals from the prosecutors. Iwao Hakamata pleaded guilty after marathon interrogation sessions but recanted at trial.
The Hiroshima High Court rejected local residents’ call to halt the operation of an idled nuclear reactor in western Japan. The ruling will allow the operator, Shikoku Electric Power, to use the No. 3 reactor at the Ikata nuclear power plant in Ehime Prefecture, which has been suspended for a regular inspection through June 19. The main issue at trial was whether the utility’s estimate of seismic ground motion, a key factor in a reactor’s quake-resistance design, was appropriate.
Prosecutors indicted the director of the Association for Patients of Intractable Diseases, Hiromichi Kikuchi, for allegedly mediating organ transplants overseas without government approval. He is suspected of facilitating transplants for two recipients in Belarus in return for a total payment of ¥51.5 million ($390,000).
The deputy secretary-general of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party, Masahiko Shibayama, called on Prime Minister Fumio Kishida to reform Japan’s child custody rules so that divorced parents are not driven to abduct their children from each other. The current system gives custody to only one parent, often the one who was last with the child, triggering a race to abduct them first. Sometimes the abductions occur across national borders. Eighty-two Australian children have been snatched by their Japanese parent and hidden from their Australian families since 2004. Shibayama and upper house councillor Mizuho Umemura urged the Australian government to raise the issue publicly to create pressure for change.
Koreas
Prosecutors said they will seek the extradition of Do Kwon, co-founder of the cryptocurrency firm Terraform Labs, after he was arrested in Montenegro. They are investigating Kwon for alleged fraud and tax evasion following the crash of the TerraUSD and Luna crypto coins. Investors have accused him of operating a Ponzi scheme. Kwon is also facing criminal charges in the United States.
The Constitutional Court ruled that controversial revisions to the Prosecutors’ Office Act and the Criminal Procedure Act are valid, despite recognizing irregularities in the legislation's passage through the National Assembly. The revisions were designed to significantly reduce prosecutors’ investigative powers by allowing them to investigate only two types of crime: corruption and economic crime.
Police said they have opened a preliminary investigation into Chun Woo-won, a grandson of the late strongman and President Chun Doo-hwan, over suspected illegal drug use. The younger Chun, who is currently in New York City, was rushed to a hospital after appearing to take narcotics while live streaming on YouTube. In recent social media posts, the grandson accused his family of living luxuriously on wealth hidden by his grandfather. The former president was accused of embezzling hundreds of millions of dollars.
Taiwan
The Constitutional Court ordered the Legislative Yuan to specify the circumstances in which a party at fault may not file for divorce, pursuant to Civil Code Article 1052. It acted after Judge Chu Cheng-kun (朱政坤) of the Kaohsiung Juvenile and Family Court sought a constitutional interpretation of the article, arguing that it contravened the legal principle of proportionality. The Constitutional Court found the provision does not contravene the constitutional right of freedom of marriage, but said its application should be limited.
The Legislative Yuan passed a highly anticipated spending plan to distribute surplus tax revenue, including a NT$6,000 (US$198) handout to each citizen and eligible foreign nationals beginning on April 6, and cash allocations to many social and economic programs.
The Taiwan Jury Association called for amending the constitutional arrangement for the appointment of grand justices, citing concern that the president currently may appoint all 15 members of the Constitutional Court. The constitution provides that grand justices should be appointed in two cohorts four years apart, a design intended to prevent the president from wielding too much influence over the court. But the mechanism has been in disarray since former President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) ignored the cohort system and filled seven vacancies.