For the first time Taiwanese men took part in the White Ribbon Campaign (
Activities were held in Taipei, Kaohsiung, Tainan and Taichung.
"It's time for Taiwanese men to voice their opposition to sex discrimination and violence," said male activists, including lawmakers, scholars, celebrities and university students.
Kaohsiung City Mayor Frank Hsieh (
Also yesterday was the International Day for the Eradication of Violence Against Women (Nov. 25), which was set up by the UN last year, to raise public awareness of the problem.
Violence against women, domestic violence in particular, is said to be a serious problem in Taiwan, according to statistics released by district courts throughout the country.
There were 3,551 cases of domestic violence reported to the courts within the last year; and 9,553 people asked the court for legal protection from domestic violence within the same timeframe.
The majority of attacks came from men, the proportion of male to female offenders being 19 to one.
"In other words, around 26 women per day asked for the courts' protection, and every three hours a woman took legal action for violence in this country," said Bih Herng-dar (
Statistics released by the Ministry of the Interior in 1998 showed there were 1,701 rape cases a year, or between four and five cases a day.
"These figures are just the tip of the iceberg," Bih said.
"To reach the goal of sex equality, we have to not only instill the idea at school, but first practice [equality] in the family," said Wang Ya-ke (
The White Ribbon Campaign to end violence against women was originally launched in Canada, after a high-profile case in that country.
On Dec. 6, 1989, Marc Lepine went to the Ecole Polytechnic in Montreal armed with a Sturm Ruger Mini-14 semi-automatic rifle and systematically began to murder every female student he could find.
Fourteen women were killed and 13 others were wounded, before Lepine shot himself.
He left a suicide note explaining how he was refused admission to engineering school. In it, he blamed women and feminism for ruining his life.
Two years later, near the end of 1991, a handful of men in Ontario and Quebec decided that men had a responsibility to speak out against violence toward women.
They decided to wear a white ribbon on Dec. 6, in memory of the 14 women who died, as a symbol of men's opposition to violence against women.
Nearly 500,000 people wear white ribbons in Canada every year for this event and the campaign has been expanded to many other countries, including the US, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Europe.
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