Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te has launched a bid to bring back military courts, a plan aimed at combating Chinese infiltration of its armed forces but highly controversial in a society that endured nearly 40 years of martial law.
Lai said on Thursday his government would work on legal amendments to allow military judges to handle cases in which active armed forces personnel were accused of offences such as rebellion, aiding the enemy, leaking secrets and disobeying orders.
The move, led by Lai’s National Security Council and the defence ministry, is part of a package of measures announced by the president that are intended to strengthen Taiwanese society against what he called a rapidly growing threat from China.
The restoration of military trials is unlikely to get approval in parliament, where the opposition majority has done everything in its power to block Lai’s administration since he took office last May.
But the initiative is expected to trigger fierce public debate and further deepen the partisan divide which has rendered Taiwan’s politics dysfunctional since the president’s Democratic Progressive party lost its legislative majority in the January 2024 election.
“We have no choice but to take more proactive steps. It is time for us to take preventive measures, strengthen our democratic resilience and national security, and protect the freedom, democracy and way of life we cherish,” Lai said.
China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and threatens to annex it by force if Taipei refuses to submit to its control indefinitely. In recent years, Beijing has stepped up military manoeuvres around Taiwan as well as propaganda campaigns and attempts to infiltrate its society.
On Wednesday, Taiwanese immigration authorities announced they would expel a Chinese resident of Taiwan who had been advocating for the country’s annexation by Beijing on social media.
According to Taiwan’s intelligence agency, 64 people were prosecuted last year in cases relating to espionage for China, three times as many as three years ago, and 23 per cent of those indicted were active military personnel.
Taiwan abolished military jurisdiction in 2013 following a public outcry over a slow and opaque military investigation into a hazing case that claimed the life of a conscript. It was part of long-running efforts to rid the country of the legacy of authoritarian rule.
The Kuomintang, the party which once ruled China, used martial law for 38 years to secure its control over Taiwan after it fled to the island following defeat in the Chinese civil war in 1949.
“The idea behind Lai’s initiative is likely to make the existing, rather toothless, national security legislation more effective,” said Lev Nachman, a political scientist at National Taiwan University. “But Taiwan is incredibly partisan right now, and it will inevitably fuel that tendency,” he added.
“On paper, the proposal is going to look like heavy-handed government measures, and that will be exploited by the people who use ‘Green Terror’ as their talking point,” he said. The DPP’s party colour is green, while political repression under the KMT was known as the “White Terror”.
The defence ministry said draft amendments to the criminal code of the armed forces would not restore broad military jurisdiction as seen in the authoritarian era. Only criminal offences specific to the military would fall under the jurisdiction of military courts.
Since 2013, Taiwanese law has only allowed for military courts in wartime, in line with European countries such as Germany and France. But other countries, including the US and the UK, have military courts in peacetime.
The Taiwanese military continued training officers as prosecutors and judges since its phasing out of peacetime military trials.
But Lieutenant General Shen Shih-wei, head of the defence ministry’s legal department, said this was “not a good system”.
“Their lack of practice means that we would struggle to properly operate military courts if we had to in wartime, and that would raise more risks for democracy and civil rights,” Shen said.
