Several civic groups yesterday called on the Control Yuan to look into dozens of cases of prolonged pretrial detention of foreigners and to reprimand government agencies for negligence of duty.
Holding various posters, including one that read: “Foreigners in Taiwan are not granted human rights as they are outside the protection of the law,” the groups urged the government watchdog to address the system that discriminates against aliens.
The Taiwan Association for Human Rights (TAHR) said that at the Taipei detention center alone — one of four centers nationwide that hold foreign nationals — dozens of aliens have been detained for more than 120 days even though they have not received sentences exceeding three months.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
“Infringement of the liberty of aliens like this is an urgent matter that needs to be resolved,” TAHR secretary-general Tsai Chi-hsun (蔡季勳) said.
The groups said the longstanding problem rested with the National Immigration Agency (NIA), prosecutors’ offices and courts that have procrastinated over holding trials involving detained aliens, as well as the Ministry of Justice and the Judicial Yuan, which have failed to address the human rights violations.
As an example, the groups said authorities detained two Thai migrant workers who were listed as witnesses in a human-trafficking case against employers, for expired visas, for 11 months from September last year.
“The Taiwanese government has been boasting that Taiwan has been given first-class status by the US Department of State in combating human trafficking for two consecutive years. However, is this really how a first-class country treats an alien in detention?” Tsai asked.
In a letter presented to the Control Yuan, the TAHR said that several aliens held at the Taipei detention center for between five and 14 months were detained in connection with crimes in six cases that were all summary offenses, but the Taoyuan District Court had refused to begin their trials.
“The NIA, prosecutors and the court all deserve to be censured,” Tsai said.
Extension of detention is based on Article 38 of the Immigration Act (入出國及移民法), which stipulates that detention shall not exceed 60 days, but if necessary, the NIA could prolong the period until the alien is deported.
“The Ministry of Justice and the Judicial Yuan have turned a deaf ear to our requests to examine the constitutionality of the article,” Tsai said.
The government has taken the lead in infringing human rights by violating the non-discrimination principle enshrined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights that freedom of liberty, movement and a fair trial are rights enjoyed by everyone regardless of nationality, the groups said.
The government must offer compensation for illegal detention to affected aliens in accordance with the Criminal Compensation Act (刑事補償法), they said.
CHIP WAR: The new restrictions are expected to cut off China’s access to Taiwan’s technologies, materials and equipment essential to building AI semiconductors Taiwan has blacklisted Huawei Technologies Co (華為) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯), dealing another major blow to the two companies spearheading China’s efforts to develop cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) chip technologies. The Ministry of Economic Affairs’ International Trade Administration has included Huawei, SMIC and several of their subsidiaries in an update of its so-called strategic high-tech commodities entity list, the latest version on its Web site showed on Saturday. It did not publicly announce the change. Other entities on the list include organizations such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda, as well as companies in China, Iran and elsewhere. Local companies need
CRITICISM: It is generally accepted that the Straits Forum is a CCP ‘united front’ platform, and anyone attending should maintain Taiwan’s dignity, the council said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it deeply regrets that former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) echoed the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) “one China” principle and “united front” tactics by telling the Straits Forum that Taiwanese yearn for both sides of the Taiwan Strait to move toward “peace” and “integration.” The 17th annual Straits Forum yesterday opened in Xiamen, China, and while the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) local government heads were absent for the first time in 17 years, Ma attended the forum as “former KMT chairperson” and met with Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Chairman Wang Huning (王滬寧). Wang
CROSS-STRAIT: The MAC said it barred the Chinese officials from attending an event, because they failed to provide guarantees that Taiwan would be treated with respect The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) on Friday night defended its decision to bar Chinese officials and tourism representatives from attending a tourism event in Taipei next month, citing the unsafe conditions for Taiwanese in China. The Taipei International Summer Travel Expo, organized by the Taiwan Tourism Exchange Association, is to run from July 18 to 21. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokeswoman Zhu Fenglian (朱鳳蓮) on Friday said that representatives from China’s travel industry were excluded from the expo. The Democratic Progressive Party government is obstructing cross-strait tourism exchange in a vain attempt to ignore the mainstream support for peaceful development
DEFENSE: The US would assist Taiwan in developing a new command and control system, and it would be based on the US-made Link-22, a senior official said The Ministry of National Defense is to propose a special budget to replace the military’s currently fielded command and control system, bolster defensive resilience and acquire more attack drones, a senior defense official said yesterday. The budget would be presented to the legislature in August, the source said on condition of anonymity. Taiwan’s decade-old Syun An (迅安, “Swift Security”) command and control system is a derivative of Lockheed Martin’s Link-16 developed under Washington’s auspices, they said. The Syun An system is difficult to operate, increasingly obsolete and has unresolved problems related to integrating disparate tactical data across the three branches of the military,
RSS