President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has heard the call of the White Rose Movement and is urging swift passage of a draft bill to regulate the certification, performance and ethics of judges, the Presidential Office said in a statement issued yesterday.
The statement came in response to a rally by thousands of demonstrators in front of the Presidential Office on Ketagalan Boulevard last night calling for incompetent judges to be dismissed. Demonstrators also called for legislation to better protect children and people with disabilities against sexual abuse.
The demonstrators, many joined by their children, handed out white roses to call for better care of minors.
PHOTO: SAM YEH, AFP
The White Rose Movement, initiated by local netizens and organizations dedicated to the welfare of women and children, emerged amid public fury stirred by the recent acquittals and light sentences given to people accused of molesting children because the judges ruled that it could not be proven that the victims had objected to the actions of the defendants.
In one case, Supreme Court judges rejected an appeal to convict a suspect accused of molesting a three-year-old girl because prosecutors failed to prove the alleged offense was committed against the girl’s wishes. The case was sent back to a lower court for retrial.
In another case, a judge ruled that prosecutors failed to prove a six-year-old girl had shown “strong will” in fighting off the perpetrator, and found him guilty of “having sex with a person under 14 years of age,” which came with a sentence of three years and two months in prison, rather than finding him guilty of committing “sexual assault,” which is punishable by three to 10 years in jail.
The rulings led to 300,000 Internet users lodging online complaints demanding the judges be fired and calling for an overhaul of the judiciary system.
“We need laws to protect children who don’t know how to fend off sex abuse,” Garden of Hope Foundation executive director Chi Hui-jung (紀惠容) said.
The Judicial Yuan has since agreed to push for an amendment that regards sex with children under the age of seven as rape, which is punishable by a minimum sentence of seven years.
Giving his support for tougher penalties for child molesters, Ma said in the statement that he attached great importance to judicial reform and hoped that a draft of the judges’ act approved by the Cabinet and sent to the legislature on Thursday, would pass in a speedy manner.
During the legislative procedure, it is necessary to seek opinions from all circles before reaching a consensus, the statement said.
Equally important is the on-the-job training of judges and prosecutors, it said, adding that the Judicial Yuan and the Ministry of Justice must step up efforts to organize training programs.
It is worth considering cooperating with expert witnesses when the court was hearing cases of sexual assault on children, it added.
As for the compulsory medical treatment of pedophiles, the statement said Ma would like to see related agencies get on with the program, complementing other prevention measures, such as circulating notices when a pedophile moved into a community and observing high-risk families.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY CNA AND AP
AGING: As of last month, people aged 65 or older accounted for 20.06 percent of the total population and the number of couples who got married fell by 18,685 from 2024 Taiwan has surpassed South Korea as the country least willing to have children, with an annual crude birthrate of 4.62 per 1,000 people, Ministry of the Interior data showed yesterday. The nation was previously ranked the second-lowest country in terms of total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime. However, South Korea’s fertility rate began to recover from 2023, with total fertility rate rising from 0.72 and estimated to reach 0.82 to 0.85 by last year, and the crude birthrate projected at 6.7 per 1,000 people. Japan’s crude birthrate was projected to fall below six,
US President Donald Trump in an interview with the New York Times published on Thursday said that “it’s up to” Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be “very unhappy” with a change in the “status quo.” “He [Xi] considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing, but I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that. I hope he doesn’t do that,” Trump said. Trump made the comments in the context
SELF-DEFENSE: Tokyo has accelerated its spending goal and its defense minister said the nation needs to discuss whether it should develop nuclear-powered submarines China is ramping up objections to what it sees as Japan’s desire to acquire nuclear weapons, despite Tokyo’s longstanding renunciation of such arms, deepening another fissure in the two neighbors’ increasingly tense ties. In what appears to be a concerted effort, China’s foreign and defense ministries issued statements on Thursday condemning alleged remilitarism efforts by Tokyo. The remarks came as two of the country’s top think tanks jointly issued a 29-page report framing actions by “right-wing forces” in Japan as posing a “serious threat” to world peace. While that report did not define “right-wing forces,” the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was
PREPAREDNESS: Given the difficulty of importing ammunition during wartime, the Ministry of National Defense said it would prioritize ‘coproduction’ partnerships A newly formed unit of the Marine Corps tasked with land-based security operations has recently replaced its aging, domestically produced rifles with more advanced, US-made M4A1 rifles, a source said yesterday. The unnamed source familiar with the matter said the First Security Battalion of the Marine Corps’ Air Defense and Base Guard Group has replaced its older T65K2 rifles, which have been in service since the late 1980s, with the newly received M4A1s. The source did not say exactly when the upgrade took place or how many M4A1s were issued to the battalion. The confirmation came after Chinese-language media reported
RSS