Legal experts yesterday called for legislation that would appropriately counter Beijing's "Anti-Secession" Law on a statutory front.
While the Anti-Secession Law has been dealt with extensively from diplomatic and political perspectives since its passage last Monday, little has been said of its legal nature, Chen Hwei-syin (
"There is a move from traditional warfare toward a legal battle between Taiwan and China," Chen said.
Tsai Tzung-Jen (
"The law itself is not a missile, but it can be like packaging for tomorrow's missiles," Tsai said. She said that the legislature should take this "golden opportunity" to turn the game around by passing appropriate legislation.
Chen agreed, saying that lawmakers should amend the legal stipulations that create ambiguity about Taiwan's legal status.
"Our stance on Taiwan's status needs to be made clear. Either we go the route that independence supporters want, or we make changes to the Constitution and its prologue, or we just make minor adjustments to the word choice of some laws," National Taiwan University Law professor Yen Chueh-an (顏厥安) said, explaining that China's law could effectively change the nation's legal status.
Tsai said that China's authorization of "non-peaceful" means against Taiwan was a mistake.
"It's a big contradiction. The authorization of the use of force should not be in this law. China uses force to put down domestic riots all the time. If there is need of a law to authorize the use of force against Taiwan, it indicates that the legality of this force comes from somewhere else," Tsai said.
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Lin Cho-shui (
"They did not need a law authorizing the use of force before," Lin said.
Chang Wen-chen (張文貞), a law professor at National Taiwan University, examined Beijing's treatment of secession rights, noting that, legally speaking, there should not be any dispute over secession rights between Taiwan and China.
"Since Taiwan is not a part of China, de facto or de jure, there is no problem concerning secession rights," she said.
Chang said that there was a move internationally toward the protection of secession rights and that several nations have already ensconced secession rights in their constitutions.
"Several African nations, including Ethiopia, have placed the right to secede into their new constitutions," Chang said, adding that the former USSR was the first nation to make legal allowances for secession.
Chen Chao-ju (
"China's use of `non-peaceful means' instead of `military force' in the bill has brought praise from some sectors, but in a way this new term actually better describes the situation. It is more than just military force, it is also a linguistic and psychological attack," Chen said, pointing to the definition of violence in feminist theory as more than just a physical attack.
"Violence doesn't have to be just physical ... China's violence takes many forms, but remember, the ultimate motive remains unchanged," Chen said.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,