The government of Chen Shui-bian (
In a report issued in Washington yesterday on human rights conditions in more than 160 countries last year, Amnesty points to continued incidents of torture by the police, imposition of the death penalty, the trade in stun guns and the failure to ratify two international human rights conventions.
"Despite its promises to improve the human rights situation, the government implemented few reforms," the report said. However it did acknowledge pledges made by Chen late last year to implement changes addressing human rights concerns.
"Torture remained a serious and often unreported problem," the Amnesty report says. It cites allegations by the Chinese Association for Human Rights last year that police tortured 1,700 suspects to extract confessions in 2000. "Lawyers and human rights activists feared that confessions obtained under torture were used by the police as evidence in court," Amnesty said.
A strong opponent of the death penalty, Amnesty noted that 10 people were executed in Taiwan last year, although it pointed out a new law has reduced the number of crimes under the Military Criminal Code that carry a mandatory death sentence.
The report pays special attention to the Hsichih Trio case, in which defendants Su Chien-ho (蘇建和), Liu Bin-lang (劉秉郎) and Chuang Lin-hsun (莊林勳) remained on death row despite Chen's promise to consider a pardon.
Amnesty earlier called for an investigation into the case, saying that the men were tortured in police custody and confessed under duress. "A former cell mate of Su Chien-ho testified in May that when Su returned to his cell after an interrogation session, his lips were bloody and he was unable to stand without help. The cell mate stated that Su Chien-ho's genitals were badly swollen."
Another witness claimed that at one time, "Su [was] tied to a chair while a wooden pole was used to beat the soles of his feet, an electric cattle prod was used to apply shocks to Liu Bin-lang's genitals, and Chuang Lin-hsun was hit on the head."
Taiwan's trade in electric shock equipment, which can be used as a means of torture, was also cited in the report. Taiwan is a leading manufacturer of electro-shock equipment, including stun guns, "and there were few or no restrictions on their sale and use," Amnesty said.
The report also noted that the government was taking initial moves to ratify the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the two basic human rights documents of the UN.
While Taiwan was a signatory to the covenants, which were adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1966 and which went into force in 1976, it never bothered to ratify them. While Taiwan would have difficulty depositing certificates of ratification with the UN today, since it is not a member, human rights activists in Taiwan have urged the government to ratify them anyway, to make sure local laws and practices are in line with recognized international human rights standards.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
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Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching