Taiwan is a nation of migrants. Some are the descendants of migrants who arrived more than four centuries ago, some are later arrivals who came to Taiwan with the defeated Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) army. Their different backgrounds have contributed to diversity in Taiwanese society.
The nation is lucky enough not to have serious problems with racism, but it does have ethnic tensions, largely between descendants of those early settlers, Mainlanders and Aborigines.
However, through integration Taiwan has the luxury of contemplating its future and addressing the challenges society faces.
Europe and the US are grappling with the issue of refugees, be they Syrians, Iraqis, Afghans or Central or South Americans, forced by famine or war to flee their homes. Many of these refugees have met with tragedy on their journeys and, even if fortunate enough to have reached a safe destination, have had to struggle to survive as well as deal with prejudice and ignorance.
The host countries, too, are facing difficulties, be it public security, cultural or economic tensions, job opportunities or the threat of terrorist attack. All of this adds to the mutual fear and suspicion that have made migration such a contentious issue.
Although Taiwan is far from the center of the refugee crises, it is nevertheless seen as an asylum and a beacon of democracy and freedom by Chinese democracy campaigners, Uighurs and Tibetans, all of whom have been repressed by totalitarian rule in China. As such, refugees are not unheard of in Taiwan.
In 2015, during her election campaign, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said that seeing the widely reproduced photograph of a dead Syrian toddler lying on a beach made her want to do something to help.
“Freedom and human rights are the values Taiwanese prize the most, and when faced with the issue of refugees, Taiwan should see itself as no different from other countries,” she said at an event in June last year.
Taiwan this year invited international experts to visit and review the nation’s efforts regarding the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which have been enacted into local law.
The experts are likely to push for the prompt passage of refugee legislation, without which Taiwan is not compliant with international law regarding non-refoulement — which states that no nation will return accepted asylum seekers to their country of origin if they are at risk of persecution based on race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or their political opinions — and open to criticism.
On July 14 last year, draft legislation regarding stateless people and foreign nationals passed a preliminary reading in the Legislative Yuan’s Foreign and National Defense Committee.
According to the draft, victims of political or religious persecution would, following a vetting process, be allowed to stay in Taiwan. If the amendment becomes law, it would take effect one year following its declaration.
An amendment to Article 17 of the Act Governing the Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) regarding refugees from China, Hong Kong and Macau also passed a preliminary reading in the Internal Administration Committee on June 27 last year. This article could function as a refugee law.
Hopefully, the two amendments will soon be sent to the full legislature for review. A refugee law would become a touchstone for human rights in Taiwan and a milestone for human rights in the international community.
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
Ursula K. le Guin in The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas proposed a thought experiment of a utopian city whose existence depended on one child held captive in a dungeon. When taken to extremes, Le Guin suggests, utilitarian logic violates some of our deepest moral intuitions. Even the greatest social goods — peace, harmony and prosperity — are not worth the sacrifice of an innocent person. Former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), since leaving office, has lived an odyssey that has brought him to lows like Le Guin’s dungeon. From late 2008 to 2015 he was imprisoned, much of this
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and