The Road Home to Justice - Reflections on "Hai-Wang's Daybreak: Chiu Ho-Shun's Forgotten 32 Years" in Zhunan

From Taipei to Zhunan is only about 80 kilometers. Yet for Chiu Ho-Shun, it has become a road home that has taken more than 30 years. Even now, freedom seems farther away. How many years without sun, moon, or stars must a person endure to prove his innocence? How many years of longing for the sea breeze of home?

Zhunan is a midsize city that has grown with the technology industry. Recently, it hosted an exhibition about justice and society that caught my attention: the Chiu Ho-Shun case, which I had always understood only in part. I went with my parents and younger sister. The exhibition was called "Hai-Wang's Daybreak." Chiu received the childhood nickname Hai-Wang after an abundant catch at Longfeng Harbor on April 7, the day he was born more than 60 years ago. The sea he remembers has become a landscape of longing across three decades. How far is the narrow, sunless cell from the real "daybreak" of freedom? Eight years ago, Chiu's mother stood outside Longfeng Temple in Zhunan with support organizations collecting signatures for her son's release. Eight years later, she is gone, while Chiu still lives under the possibility of execution.

It is natural that many people question whether Chiu Ho-Shun is truly innocent. After seeing the exhibition, however, I watched visitors gradually find answers to many of their doubts. The part that stayed with me most concerned the loss of crucial evidence. A court said the victim's family should not bear the disadvantage caused by that loss. Fair enough-but should Chiu Ho-Shun bear it instead? The police officers who forced confessions through unlawful methods-including chili-water torture, beatings, threats, and humiliation-were later proven to have done so and were convicted. Yet Chiu's death sentence remained final. Most frightening of all was an old news clip in which police, speaking before the cameras, urged Chiu to admit to something he said he had not done. Chiu could only answer helplessly: if you insist that I confess, I can confess-but what I did not do, I did not do. The atmosphere captured Taiwan just after the end of martial law, when society seemed already convinced that this "suspect" was utterly evil and unrepentant. Decades later, has twenty-first-century society really learned the presumption of innocence? Or are we still too eager to find someone to condemn?

Many people harmed by wrongful judicial action are still waiting for the justice system to fulfill responsibilities it should have met from the beginning. What role should young people-and, more broadly, each of us as citizens-play? A handful of judicial decisions can destroy a life; Chiu Ho-Shun has spent almost his entire life trying to prove his innocence. After the exhibition, I visited the temple courtyard where his mother collected signatures eight years ago, then the coastline where the court found that Chiu had disposed of a body, and finally the harbor that gave him the name Hai-Wang. We should understand that this is not only the tragedy of one person or one family. It is a failure of the state and society as a whole, and while change is still possible, we should move toward something better.

Industrial innovation has helped make Taiwan a global technology power. But genuine growth and progress must also rest on reflection and understanding of our own society. The more honestly we are willing to face ourselves, the more solid any future economic achievement can be. Transitional justice is difficult and socially costly precisely because past governments created problems they refused to confront at the time. The same is true of wrongful convictions accumulated over decades. If today's society chooses collective amnesia, we are simply leaving those problems to the next generation. Economic development may make a country a world leader in particular industries; only honest social dialogue and self-reflection can strengthen society as a whole.