Taiwan has made significant progress in the past 30 years in terms of human rights protection, Amnesty International (AI) secretary-general Salil Shetty said yesterday.
However, he said there is still room for improvement — especially when it comes to police brutality and the use of torture against peaceful demonstrators.
On his first visit to Taiwan, Shetty said it does not feel like an unfamiliar country, because AI, along with other global human rights organizations, have worked with Taiwan before, including efforts to rescue political prisoners during the Martial Law era.
Photo: Chien Jung-fong, Taipei Times
After several days in the country, which has included traveling down to Greater Kaohsiung, Shetty said he has enjoyed Taiwan’s landscape and people’s dynamism and energy, especially when it comes to human rights issues.
“I believe events in the past two or three months, such as the Sunflower movement, have been helpful in raising public awareness and increasing involvement in human rights campaigns,” Shetty said in an interview with the Taipei Times yesterday.
However, when it comes to how the government responded to those demonstrations, Shetty shakes his head.
“We haven’t made detailed research, but from all the assessments we’ve made so far, there have been several cases in which the police have used excessive force in crowd control, especially when facing peaceful, sitting demonstrators,” he said. “In a democratic society, peaceful assembly is a fundamental right of the people — it is also stated in the Taiwanese Constitution — and it is the government’s responsibility to protect it.”
“The use of public spaces for public protests is a legitimate use, as long as it’s for peaceful demonstration,” he added.
Shetty said that, for instance, the use of water cannons against peaceful demonstrators is in violation of international human rights standards. “There is a set of UN guidelines for police handling of public protests, which especially stresses the point that all measures must be ‘necessary’ and ‘proportional,’” he said.
Shetty said he brought up the issue in a meeting with Vice President Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) on Friday and called on the government to take immediate action on allegations and complaints of excessive use of force by the police, as well as provide better training for police crowd control and revise the Assembly and Parade Act (集會遊行法), which falls outside of international standards.
Speaking about the death of late army corporal Hung Chung-chiu (洪仲丘) and the cases of death-row inmates Cheng Hsing-tse (鄭性澤) and Chiu Ho-shun (邱和順), Shetty said the three cases show that — long after Martial Law was lifted in 1987 — torture still exists in the nation, since Hung died of torture, while Cheng and Chiu have both said that they were tortured to extract the confessions that led to their death sentence.
“Besides the issue of torture, reforms should be made in giving prisoners proper medical treatment — for instance, your former president Chen Shui-bian [陳水扁] is suffering because he has not received proper treatment,” Shetty said.
“Overcrowding in most prisons is also not good for prisoners’ health,” he added.
Shetty said that although Wu listened to him closely and expressed agreement, he remains skeptical about whether the vice president is serious about making changes.
“In AI, we go by actions, not words,” he added.
Asked about recent public calls for capital punishment for Cheng Chieh (鄭捷), the suspect in the deaths of four people in a knife attack that also wounded 24 on Taipei’s Mass Rapid Transit system last month, Shetty said that while AI members would stand in sympathy and solidarity with victims and their families, “we do not support the death penalty.”
“When we started the anti-death-penalty campaign three decades ago, there were only 30 countries without the death penalty. Now, there are only about 30 countries that still have it,” he said. “Research shows that the death penalty has nothing to do with the crime rate. In fact, the crime rate has fallen in many countries where the death penalty was abolished.”
“The question to ask is why the government is unable to prevent the crime in the first place,” he added.
Shetty also urged Taiwanese to show more concern about human rights violations in China.
“Taiwan has geographical proximity to China, which has grown economically, but does not respect human rights,” he said. “Taiwan shows the contrast: You have economic growth with human rights protection.”
“However, if you want to sustain economic growth and social stability, you need to have more freedom,” Shetty said.
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
Taiwan yesterday denied Chinese allegations that its military was behind a cyberattack on a technology company in Guangzhou, after city authorities issued warrants for 20 suspects. The Guangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau earlier yesterday issued warrants for 20 people it identified as members of the Information, Communications and Electronic Force Command (ICEFCOM). The bureau alleged they were behind a May 20 cyberattack targeting the backend system of a self-service facility at the company. “ICEFCOM, under Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, directed the illegal attack,” the warrant says. The bureau placed a bounty of 10,000 yuan (US$1,392) on each of the 20 people named in
The High Court yesterday found a New Taipei City woman guilty of charges related to helping Beijing secure surrender agreements from military service members. Lee Huei-hsin (李慧馨) was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison for breaching the National Security Act (國家安全法), making illegal compacts with government employees and bribery, the court said. The verdict is final. Lee, the manager of a temple in the city’s Lujhou District (蘆洲), was accused of arranging for eight service members to make surrender pledges to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in exchange for money, the court said. The pledges, which required them to provide identification
INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the
RSS