A bill aimed at acknowledging the wide range of religions now practiced in Taiwan, stamping out fraud by religious organizations and allowing religious schools to apply for official recognition of their qualifications passed its first reading in the legislature yesterday.
Religious organizations violating the law would be disbanded by the government, if the Legislative Yuan passes the draft.
"The bill will finally give us a legal basis to regulate religious organizations' operations in Tai-wan," said Lin Mei-chu (林美珠), director of the Ministry of the Interior's Civil Affairs Department.
The country has enforced a Management of Temples Law since 1929. The law specifically regulates Buddhism and Taoism but ignores other religions.
According to the Ministry of the Interior, 18 religions are now practiced in Taiwan.
"With numerous new religions and some religions' commercialization, we believe it's necessary to regulate religious organizations' operations by enacting this law," the Cabinet said of the draft.
The bill was introduced to the legislature's Home and Nations Committee on Wednesday.
If the bill is passed into law, all religious organizations in Taiwan would be required to register with local governments' civil affairs departments. With the registration, religious organizations would have to describe their activities and list their assets -- a requirement intended to prevent the fraudulent solicitation of funds.
Under the regulations, religious organizations would be allowed to found religious schools, which will be eligible for Ministry of Education accreditation if they meet ministry criteria.
There are numerous religious schools in Taiwan, including Christian and Buddhist, but the number of such schools is unknown as the Ministry of Education does not recognize the schools' qualifications.
PFP Legislator Shen Chih-hwei (沈智慧), who has been pushing the bill's passage in the legislature, said many religious organizations had opposed the bill, arguing it would violate the freedom of religion.
"But this law is to legalize the status of religious organizations and we hope it will help end religious chaos," Shen said yesterday.
Taiwan has experienced a number of scandals in recent years involving religious organizations illegally soliciting donations.
Sung Chi-li (
Last year, some 1,800 former followers of Tai Ji Men Qigong Academy accused the head of the academy, Hong Shih-ho (
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
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
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater