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Control Yuan corrects MND over defector case

ROC Central News Agency

2009/07/23 20:38:05
Taipei, July 23 (CNA) Taiwan's top watchdog Control Yuan issued a correction Thursday to the Ministry of National Defense (MND) over the ministry's failure to properly handle a case involving World Bank Senior Vice President Justin Yifu Lin, who defected to China from Taiwan over 40 years ago.

The correction, proposed by Control Yuan members Yeh Yao-peng and Chao Chang-ping, says that the Defense Ministry failed to act in the years after Lin -- whose original name is Lin Cheng-yi -- defected to China May 16, 1979 when he was serving as a Republic of China Army officer on Taiwan's frontline island of Kinmen.

The ministry continued to list Lin as "missing" until 2002, when the defection was officially reported. Not until then was Lin placed on a wanted list, according to the correction.

Afterward, it says, the ministry failed to seek inter-agency consultations to work out measures to deal with the case.

The correction says the Defense Ministry remained indecisive over the Lin case because its Department of Military Justice and the Military High Court have had different views on the explanation for Lin's defection and on what law should be applied to the case.

Deputy Minister of National Defense Lin Yu-pao said in a May 6 interpellation session at the Legislative Yuan that the World Bank official is still on the military's wanted list for defecting to the enemy.

During that interpellation session, a Kuomintang lawmaker asked whether the Defense Ministry would agree with Lin -- now China's top economist -- returning to Taiwan for a visit.

Lin Yu-pao said the issue would require further discussion by the ministry.

Justin Yifu Lin took up his World Bank position in June 2008 after serving for 15 years as a professor at Peking University's China Center for Economic Research, which he founded. He is on leave from the university while working at the World Bank.

He has admitted in many television interviews that he swam across the channel separating Kinmen and Xiamen in China's Fujian Province May 16, 1979 to seek a new life and new career, but filed an application from Beijing in May 2002 to return to Taiwan to attend his father's funeral.

The Taiwanese authorities approved his application but warned that he could face the legal consequences of his defection if he returned, which made him decide not to attend the funeral.

The Defense Ministry has noted in the past that Lin's action constituted surrendering to the enemy, treason and desertion from the frontline, all of which carry a maximum penalty of death.

(By Deborah Kuo) ENDITEM/J