As the world celebrates International Human Rights Day tomorrow, Taiwan will also be presented with an opportunity to reflect on its progress, or lack thereof, in safeguarding human rights over the past year.
Recent events are likely to cast a pall on Taiwan’s image. Just last week, Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) Deputy Secretary-General Maa Shaw-chang (馬紹章) announced that the Taichung City Government would designate a 30,000-ping (nearly 100,000m²) “protest zone,” or “opinion plaza,” so that protesters could make their voices heard during the fourth round of negotiations between SEF Chairman Chiang Pin-kung (江丙坤) and his Chinese counterpart Chen Yunlin (陳雲林) later this month.
Although Taichung Mayor Jason Hu (胡志強) put the brakes on what he called a “premature” idea, adding that it would be unconstitutional to deprive people of their right to assemble outside a designated area, Taiwan’s international image as a country that, unlike China, honors freedom of speech, was nevertheless tainted.
Several international media organizations have expressed interest in sending crews to cover the Taichung talks, not so much for the talks themselves, but rather over expectations that the “orderly protests” might get out of hand.
And it gets worse.
As the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper, the Liberty Times wrote yesterday, the Taichung City Police Bureau has reportedly attempted to “persuade” shops around the talks’ hotel venue to close during the meeting over concerns of possible riots in the area.
It is understandable that law enforcement officers would seek to maintain social order. But the assumption that protesters will be violent highlights a bias against dissent and reveals an authoritarian mindset that stigmatizes protesters regardless of their cause or behavior.
No wonder the failure to revise the Assembly and Parade Act (集會遊行法) continues to top the list of the public’s 10 main concerns about human rights this year, as a survey by the Taiwan Associations for Human Rights has shown.
Taiwan may have completed its transition from the “hard” authoritarianism left behind by dictator Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) to a “softer” authoritarian rule initiated by his son and successor Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) in the 1980s, but to this day, many people believe that an authoritarian reflex lingers among government and police officers, which has become the biggest hurdle to a legislative revision of the Act.
It is also inexcusable that the administration of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), which has deeply immersed itself in cementing ties with China, has failed to take people’s rights to assemble with equal urgency.
Whether full engagement with China will bring economic benefits to the nation’s export-oriented economy remains to be seen. But in every contact with China, Taiwan can — and should — use the opportunity to fulfill its international obligations by playing a bigger role in encouraging Beijing to democratize and respect human rights.
By failing to do so and focusing solely on improving its economy — which seems to be the Ma administration’s favored approach — Taiwan will fail in its responsibilities as a stakeholder in the international community.
From the Iran war and nuclear weapons to tariffs and artificial intelligence, the agenda for this week’s Beijing summit between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is packed. Xi would almost certainly bring up Taiwan, if only to demonstrate his inflexibility on the matter. However, no one needs to meet with Xi face-to-face to understand his stance. A visit to the National Museum of China in Beijing — in particular, the “Road to Rejuvenation” exhibition, which chronicles the rise and rule of the Chinese Communist Party — might be even more revealing. Xi took the members
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) on Friday used their legislative majority to push their version of a special defense budget bill to fund the purchase of US military equipment, with the combined spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.78 billion). The bill, which fell short of the Executive Yuan’s NT$1.25 trillion request, was passed by a 59-0 margin with 48 abstentions in the 113-seat legislature. KMT Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文), who reportedly met with TPP Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) for a private meeting before holding a joint post-vote news conference, was said to have mobilized her
The inter-Korean relationship, long defined by national division, offers the clearest mirror within East Asia for cross-strait relations. Yet even there, reunification language is breaking down. The South Korean government disclosed on Wednesday last week that North Korea’s constitutional revision in March had deleted references to reunification and added a territorial clause defining its border with South Korea. South Korea is also seriously debating whether national reunification with North Korea is still necessary. On April 27, South Korean President Lee Jae-myung marked the eighth anniversary of the Panmunjom Declaration, the 2018 inter-Korean agreement in which the two Koreas pledged to
As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes increasingly widespread in workplaces, some people stand to benefit from the technology while others face lower wages and fewer job opportunities. However, from a longer-term perspective, as AI is applied more extensively to business operations, the personnel issue is not just about changes in job opportunities, but also about a structural mismatch between skills and demand. This is precisely the most pressing issue in the current labor market. Tai Wei-chun (戴偉峻), director-general of the Institute of Artificial Intelligence Innovation at the Institute for Information Industry, said in a recent interview with the Chinese-language Liberty Times
RSS