Faces of the missing

There were 17,667 missing persons cases on the National Police Administration's (NPA, 內政部警政署) books in December last year. After a first quarter campaign by the NPA's Missing Persons Task Force (查尋失蹤人口指導組), established on Jan. 20 this year, a considerable dent had been made in these figures. At a press conference in mid-March, the Minister of the Interior, Yu Cheng-hsien (余政憲), lauded the NPA for its efforts in closing 8,555 missing persons files nationwide.

These results aside, the police record for dealing with missing person cases has not been without criticism. Many people in organizations dealing with missing people feel a long-term government effort would be more effective than one well-publicized campaign.

"I'll admit that until the mid-1990s there were problems relating to our processing of missing persons cases," recalled Wu Kuo-liang (吳國樑), head of the NPA's Department of Household Registration. "Before that time we didn't have a centralized computer database of missing persons. This obviously created a lot of problems and led to our being criticized for inefficiency," Wu said.

The NPA's centralized computer database of missing persons was set up in 1993, and in 1998 the police started posting photographs and information regarding missing persons on its Web site, www.npa.gov.tw.

For a nation that boasts a population upwards of 23 million, the number of missing persons cases that land on the desks of both the police and the many privately funded organizations up and down the country are relatively small. The accepted explanation is the conservative social behavior of families in Taiwan.

"To have any people at all going missing is a terrible thing, but society in Taiwan is close-knit and we're very family-oriented. I think, in many ways, this explains why the number of missing persons cases appears small when compared to other parts of the world," said the NPA department chief.

On average, 800 people are reported missing annually. And while the vast majority of these are handicapped and mentally ill people above the age of 18, as well as the elderly, thousands of children also go missing every year. To date, the figure for those between the ages of 12 and 18 reported missing stands at 3,224, while the number of children under the age of 12 is 423.

"There is likely to be some discrepancy between the figures and the actual situation," explained Huang Kuo-bin (黃國賓) of the NPA's Public Information Office (內政部警政署公共關係室). "There are those people who don't want to be found, especially in cases of family break ups when one parent leaves their partner, taking their child and the spouse reports them missing."

Long way to go

The NPA's efforts earlier this year might have reunited hundreds of families with their loved ones, but the number of unsolved missing persons cases in Taiwan currently stands at 13,887, including cases that date back almost 30 years.

"Two years ago we managed to get a law that required a 24-hour waiting period before persons could be reported missing. There are now no time restrictions on when a person can officially be listed as missing," said Chen Wei-ping (陳維萍), director of the League of Welfare Improvement for Older People (LWIOP, 失蹤老人協尋中心). "But I feel there's certainly a lot still to do in regard to the manner in which missing persons cases are handled."