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Defection case will not affect military core values: MND

ROC Central News Agency

2009/07/24 16:58:54
Taipei, July 24 (CNA) The Ministry of National Defense (MND) said Friday that the defection of Justin Lin, a former Republic of China army captain who is now a World Bank senior vice president and China's top economist, will not be allowed to undermine the core values of the armed forces.

In response to a motion passed by Taiwan's top watchdog Control Yuan the day before to censure the Defense Ministry for "taking no action" and improperly handling the case involving Lin, who defected to China in 1979, military spokesman Yu Sy-tue said the Ministry will make a formal response to the Control Yuan after receiving a letter of censure.

Yu said the Defense Ministry will not allow a traitor to undermine the core values of the armed forces.

"Our loyalty to the nation remains resolute," Yu added.

The Control Yuan censure motion, 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 an army captain on Taiwan's frontline island of Kinmen.

The Defense Ministry continued to list Lin as "missing" until 2002, when the matter was reported to the judiciary, by which time the case could no longer be prosecuted as the statute of limitations had expired, the censure says.

Not until then was Lin placed on a wanted list, according to the censure.

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

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

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