It was fortunate that in these high-profile cases, which attracted a great deal of media attention, there were social organizations and volunteer lawyers willing to seek justice for the victims. There are even more disadvantaged persons from the lower strata of society, fearful of making waves, not familiar with the law, unable to afford an attorney and not even capable of understanding what the law says in court documents, who do not know where to turn when they run into trouble. But now, the Legal Aid Foundation, established three years ago by the government and privately managed, is there to help those who cannot help themselves.
In 2005, more than 20 companions from Vietnam hired to work in Taiwan went to the foreign priest in the Catholic church in Hsinchu and revealed to him that they had all been sexually assaulted by the owner and the son of the owner of the human-resources firm that had brought them to Taiwan. The church then turned to the LAF for help, and the case has already gone to trial.
A woman surnamed Chen, living in Penghu, now aged 39, was left to take care of her mildly retarded son all alone after she was divorced at 19. She scraped by with what she could earn doing odd jobs. In 1991, her boss refused to pay her accumulated back wages and even beat her, leaving her unconscious for several days and brain-damaged for life. After that, the local neighborhood chief and the social welfare bureau helped her to apply for a certificate as a handicapped and low-income person, and she began to receive a small subsidy. They also told her that she could turn to the LAF for legal assistance. Unfortunately, the statute of limitations--only two years--had run out, so her boss could not be prosecuted. However, the Kaohsiung branch of the LAF persuaded her ex-husband to pay child support, and she finally received a settlement of US$22,000.
Very often, those at the bottom of Taiwan's social ladder with the fewest resources--foreign workers, single parents, the handicapped--do not understand the law, nor are they able to afford legal assistance when they are harmed or their rights are infringed. Now, if someone is certified as being part of a low-income household, or earns less than US$1,500 per month for a family of four, then he or she can apply to the LAF for assistance, with the lawyers' bills paid for by the foundation.
Mobilizing state resources to provide legal services for the disadvantaged is the result of years of effort by non-governmental legal and human-rights groups. After passage of the necessary legislation and appropriations from the national budget, the LAF formally went into operation in July 2004.
Over the past three years, the LAF has established 20 branches across Taiwan and has 3,000 "semi-volunteers," a figure that accounts for 60 percent of all attorneys nationwide. LAF attorneys get only US$617 to US$925 per case, about half of what they charge for a private matter. The LAF has assisted in 36,708 cases so far.
"It's a duty for the state to provide legal aid to the disadvantaged, and it's the first step toward the creation of a just society," LAF Secretary-General Kuo Chi-jen, who is also a former deputy minister of the Council of Labor Affairs, said in July. Nonprofit organizations like the Taiwan Association for Human Rights, the Consumers' Foundation and bar associations also provide legal services, but they have limited budgets and manpower, and have to rely on pro bono services from individual lawyers.
In contrast, during its first year the LAF had a budget of about US$15 million, and handled 7,649 cases, so many people benefited. As word spread, in the second year the number of cases nearly doubled to 13,776 and the budget grew correspondingly, reaching US$21.6 million last year.
That seems like a considerable amount of money, but compared to other countries it is still miniscule. The United Kingdom, which began providing legal aid services in 1949, established a Legal Services Commission within the Department for Constitutional Affairs in 2000. In a country with a population only 2.6 times that of Taiwan, the LSC has a budget that is 105 times bigger, about US$4.2 billion, and handles 80 times as many cases, 2.6 million.
Currently the ratio of civil to criminal cases handled by the LAF is six to four, but the Judicial Yuan would like to see the foundation handle more criminal work. "There is definitely a difference of perspective between ourselves and the Judicial Yuan in terms of which cases we should be spending our money on," Kuo said. This is because if the LAF helps defendants offer a reasonable defense to the charges raised by prosecutors in criminal cases, the legal process will go more smoothly, and this will help the legal system deal with cases more efficiently and reduce the burden on the courts. In the future, the LAF aims for a 50-50 split between civil and criminal cases.
Besides serving individual citizens, the LAF also takes part in class-action suits. In Sinjhuang City of Taipei County, the police forcibly closed the Losheng Sanatorium to make way for a subway station in March 2007. The LAF helped the residents--all victims of Hansen's disease and separated from the world for half a century--to seek compensation from the government. The LAF was also one of the 25 social-action organizations that gathered together on behalf of half a million persons with credit-card debt to lobby the Executive Yuan and the Legislative Yuan in April 2007 to pass the Consumer Debt Act. They have also been helping in the case of the workers of the former Radio Corp. of America television factory in Taoyuan County, many of whom have died or are seriously ill from cancer or other illnesses resulting from carcinogenic chemicals dumped by the company at the site over a long period. Such lawsuits are time-consuming and the outcomes are far from being predictable.
"To win justice for the disadvantaged" is the mission of the LAF. In a democratic society, many different interests struggle for attention, and values are diverse and fractured. What the legal community considers to be "justice" may not always be applauded by the society as a whole. The passage of the Consumer Debt Act is a case in point.
Joseph Lin, director of the Taipei branch of the LAF, pointed out Aug. 10 that although last year there were nearly 220,000 cases of successful renegotiation of debt repayment, in 30 percent of the cases the debtors still defaulted. It is not always the case that debtors are unwilling to repay, but rather that the terms offered by the banks are too stringent. For example, it may not be realistic to expect someone who earned US$926 per month to repay US$895 per month for credit-card debt.
During preliminary consideration of the Consumer Debt Act in the Legislative Yuan in early April this year, the Financial Supervisory Commission and large banks collectively criticized the bill, claiming that it would allow debtors to avoid repayment.
Lin explained that the provisions of the statute are not intended to mean that debts will not be repaid. They mean that if, under the supervision of the courts, a specified percentage of the debt is repaid within a specified time, then financial institutions cannot unleash debt collectors to use whatever means necessary to recover the debt.
Explaining the reasoning for the LAF's support of the bill, Lin drew the following example. Imagine that a Good Samaritan helps a person injured in the street to get to the hospital. If the same kind-hearted soul finds a person injured at the same intersection two times, three times or 100 times, he or she would surely assume that the intersection's traffic lights and signs are malfunctioning. That person would then try to change the rules of the road. Otherwise, there will be an endless stream of accidents.
In the United Kingdom and Hong Kong, for example, bankruptcy cases take up more docket space than any other civil matter. Moreover, if society does not give credit-card debtors some breathing room and a financial mechanism to deal with their problems, then they could be forced into rash action, leading to tragedy for many more families.
Lin was one of the key players in the Judicial Reform Association, which brought so much non-governmental pressure on the judiciary that they had no choice but to improve. From there he moved on to devoting himself to lobbying for the creation of the LAF. Lin, who approaches reform with the zeal of a revolutionary, has turned over virtually all the work in his law firm to his wife, who is also an attorney, while he spends 12 hours a day, three days a week, at the LAF, all as a volunteer.
"The legal system is filled with overlapping jurisdictions and institutions, and there are all kinds of pitfalls. For poor people, legal recourse is like an apple high up in a tree: You can see it but you can't reach it," Lin said.
--The preceding is an abridgement of the article that appeared in the October 2007 issue of Taiwan Panorama, edited by Taiwan Journal staff.
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