Court Observation Recruitment | "Taiwan's Cambodia" State Compensation Case

In recent years, there have been frequent news reports of Taiwanese citizens being defrauded while seeking employment overseas. Many people have been lured to countries such as Cambodia and Myanmar, as well as Dubai, to engage in telecommunications fraud, with fraud rings restricting their freedom of movement and endangering their personal safety.

In 2022, the Taiwan Kaohsiung District Prosecutors Office (the Kaohsiung District Prosecutors Office) formed a task force to investigate a transnational employment scam. On August 9 of that year, it issued a press release titled “Taiwanese Lured to Dubai by Offers of High-Paying Jobs and Deprived of Their Freedom of Movement: Prosecutors and Investigators Uncover Dubai Telecommunications Fraud and Human Trafficking Case; Two Principal Taiwanese Suspects Detained and Held Incommunicado at Prosecutors’ Request.” However, the Kaohsiung District Prosecutors Office neither verified the authenticity of the video footage included in the press release nor fully de-identified it. Consequently, a victim who was still being held in a Cambodian scam compound was subjected to intensified abuse and confinement by their employer.

After returning to Taiwan at the end of September that year, the victim was diagnosed with severe post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and continues to require regular follow-up appointments and medication. The Control Yuan subsequently stated in its Investigation Report No. 112-Nei-Tiao-42 that the Kaohsiung District Prosecutors Office had violated relevant rules on the non-disclosure of investigations by failing to verify the video’s authenticity and properly de-identify it. The office also failed to provide the victim with counseling assistance or compensation afterward and did not hold the responsible personnel accountable, constituting dereliction of duty.

The Kaohsiung District Prosecutors Office responded that it could not be proven that the video had caused the victim to suffer more severe abuse and that, even if the office had failed to fulfill its duty to verify the video before releasing it, it had no connection to the harm suffered by the victim. In response, the JRF assisted the victim in filing a state compensation lawsuit against the Kaohsiung District Prosecutors Office to hold the agency accountable for its negligence and protect the victim’s legal rights.

Regrettably, the first-instance court dismissed the state compensation claim in Taiwan Kaohsiung District Court Summary Division Judgment No. 9, Hsiung-Kuo-Chien, 2024. On the day the judgment was handed down, the JRF, Covenants Watch, the Taipei Women’s Rescue Foundation, and the Taiwan Association for Human Rights issued a joint statement and held a joint news conference in front of the Taiwan Kaohsiung District Court to express strong dissatisfaction with the ruling.

Following an appeal, the Taiwan Kaohsiung District Court held preparatory proceedings in the case on April 29 this year. Another hearing will soon be held, on July 1 at 3pm. We invite members of the public to attend and observe the proceedings, show their support for this state compensation action, and raise awareness of the principle of non-disclosure of investigations.

Court Observation

Time

Wednesday, July 1, 2026, at 2:50pm

Location

Civil Courtroom 6, Taiwan Kaohsiung District Court (No. 188, Hedong Rd., Qianjin Dist., Kaohsiung City)

Online Registration

References

Control Yuan Investigation Report No. 112-Nei-Tiao-0042

Contact Person

Legal Specialist Zhang Jiaqi

Phone: (04) 2329-2372, ext. 14

Email: jc@jrf.org.tw