Taipei, Aug. 4 (CNA) Thirty-two days after his death and hours after his funeral, the death of Army Corporal Hung Chung-chiu was listed as homicide Sunday in the third death certificate issued by the military prosecutors.

The prosecutors met with the victim’s family in the afternoon and handed over a document saying Hung, 24, died of homicide, said Hung Tzu-yung, the sister of the deceased.

The certificate was issued hours after the family protested to President Ma Ying-jeou at the funeral, saying the military prosecutors refused to list Hung’s cause of death even though a coroner asked by the military to perform an autopsy said publicly that the soldier died of causes “inflicted by others.”

In the first certificate issued days after Hung’s death on July 4, the cause of death was listed as “accidental.”

After protests by the family and a public outcry, a second certificate issued late last month said the cause of death “remains to be verified.”

Hung was thrown into a brig and subjected to strenuous exercises in sweltering heat before collapsing on the evening of July 3 and died hours later.

Hung was due to be discharged from military service July 6. The autopsy found that he died of multiple organ failure caused by heatstroke.

Investigations have revealed that Hung should have received administrative discipline for his offense — bringing a camera phone and an MP3 player onto the base in late June — but several of his superiors bypassed standard procedure to send him to the brig, where he fainted six days later, because they held a grudge against him.

Regulations were not followed when the guards forced Hung and other soldiers being detained to do the exercises, which are normally banned under the hot and humid conditions at the time.

Even though 18 officers have been indicted over the incident, Hung’s apparently gross mistreatment and the way the military has handled the investigations have triggered condemnations among the general public.

As many as 110,000 demonstrators attended a rally held in front of the Presidential Office in Taipei Saturday, prompting the government to set up a new commission to handle cases of possible miscarriage of justice in the military, among other things.

(By Chen Shu-feng and Jay Chen)
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