On February 8 2013, a group of international scholars wrote a letter to Judge Hung Yin-hua, expressing appreciation for the courageous efforts she made in support of justice and the rule of law in Taiwan. The letter was published in the Taipei Times on February 20th, 2013.

Supporting due process and judicial independence in the trial of President Chen.

"We ... pledge our full support for your commitments ... to ensure fair and impartial administration of justice in Taiwan"

February 8, 2013

Honorable Judge Hung Yin-hua

Taipei District Court

Dear Judge Hung,

We the undersigned express our appreciation for the courageous efforts you have made in support of justice and the rule of law in Taiwan. We applaud your willingness to challenge the legality of the conviction of Taiwan's former President Chen Shui-bian. The fact that you did so as a member of Taiwan's judicial establishment, acting as early as 2009, called for an abiding sense of duty and exceptional fortitude. For this we salute you.

More recently, based on your professional expertise, you enumerated the many violations of U.N. and domestic guarantees of human rights in the substandard medical treatment given to President Chen in prison. You called upon the Ministry of Justice to grant him medical parole according to law. We share with you the concern that the health of President Chen has deteriorated dramatically since his incarceration.

In your November 22, 2010 article in the Liberty Times, you forcefully advocated due process and judicial independence and lamented their absence in the trial of President Chen. We have been equally troubled by these aspects of Taiwan's legal system. We note with alarm that you were removed from the positions of Court Director and Chief Judge in the Shilin District Court immediately after the publication of the above-mentioned article. We admire your perseverance and pledge our full support for your commitments past, present and future to ensure fair and impartial administration of justice in Taiwan.

Truly yours,

Signatories:

1. Michael Danielsen, Chairman, Taiwan Corner, Copenhagen, Denmark
2. Peter Chow, Professor, Department of Economics and Business, City College of New York, New York
3. Rev. Michael Stainton, President, Taiwanese Human Rights Association of Canada, Toronto, Canada
4. Rev. Milo Thornberry, Author, Fireproof Moth, A missionary in Taiwan's White Terror
5. June Teufel Dreyer, Professor, Political Science, University of Miami, Miami, Florida
6. Arthur Waldron, Lauder Professor of International Relations, Department of History, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
7. Wen-yen Chen, Professor Emeritus, University of the District of Columbia, and former president, North America Taiwanese Professors' Association
8. David Kilgour, Former Member of the Canadian Parliament and Secretary of State for Asia-Pacific (2002-2003), Ottawa, Canada
9. John Tkacik, US foreign service (retired) and President, China Business Intelligence, Alexandria, Virginia
10. Mark Kao, President, Formosan Association for Public Affairs, Washington, D.C.
11. Gerrit van der Wees, Editor, Taiwan Communiqué, Washington, D.C.
12. Richard Kagan, Professor Emeritus of History, Hamline University, St Paul Minnesota and author, Taiwan's Statesman, Lee Teng-hui and Democracy in Asia and Mayor Chen Shui-bian: Taipei, Taiwan
13. Clive Ansley, Member, Board of Directors, Lawyers Rights Watch Canada, Vancouver, Canada
14. Terri Giles, Executive Director, Formosa Foundation, Los Angeles, California
15. Jerome Keating, Associate Professor, National Taipei University (retired), and author, Island in the Stream, a Quick Case Study of Taiwan's Complex History and Taiwan, the Search for Identity
16. Brock Freeman, Director General, American Citizens for Taiwan, Seattle, Washington
17. Coen Blaauw, Executive Director, Formosan Association for Public Relations, Washington, D.C.
18. Christian Schafferer, Associate Professor, Department of International Trade and Global Logistics, Overseas Chinese University (Taiwan); Chair, Austrian Association of East Asian Studies; Editor, Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia
19. Michael Richardson, Taiwan Policy Examiner, www.examiner.com,
20. Brian Benedictus, Research Fellow, Formosa Foundation, Los Angeles, California
21. Gordon Chang, Author, Nuclear Showdown: North Korea Takes On the World and The Coming Collapse of China
22. Bill Hipwell, Adjunct Research Professor, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada; 2012 Taiwan Fellow, National Central Library Taiwan, Taipei, Taiwan
23. Peter Tague, Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center, Washington, D.C.
24. Ross Terrill, Fairbank Center, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts; author, The New Chinese Empire and Mao
25. The Very Rev. Bruce McLeod, Former president, Canadian Council of Churches and former moderator, the United Church of Canada
26. Michael Yahuda, Professor Emeritus, the London School of Economics, Visiting Scholar, George Washington University, Washington D.C.
27. Daniel Lynch, Associate Professor, School of International Relations, University of Southern California, Los Angeles
28. Michael Rand Hoare, Research Associate at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.