JULY 25, 2003
Hung Che-cheng, Power News
LEGAL ACTION
Taiwan's High Court sentenced reporter Hung to one-and-a-half years in prison on sedition charges for allegedly revealing military secrets. Though the court granted Hung a three-year suspended sentence, the threat of imprisonment remains.
The sedition charges stem from a July 29, 2000, article that Hung wrote for the now defunct Power News. Government prosecutors claimed that the report included classified information about Taiwan's military exercises, a sensitive topic because of the country's strained relations with mainland China, which views the island as a renegade province and has threatened to take the territory by force.
The High Court began legal proceedings against Hung in October 2000. His source for the article, Maj. Liu Chih-chung, is currently serving a two-year jail term for giving the journalist the so-called secrets.