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More human-rights work needed: experts

Human-rights experts attending a conference held yesterday to mark Human Rights Day, which fell on Dec. 10, said that in order to transform Taiwan into a state that fully upholds human rights, a new constitution appropriate to Taiwan and government review over existing injustices is urgently needed.

Experts at the conference, held by the Taiwan New Century Foundation (台灣新世紀文教基金會), a think tank dedicated to the advancement of human dignity values in Taiwan, said that the political deadlock in the Legislative Yuan has seriously hampered Taiwan's efforts in achieving an overall improvement in its human-rights situation.

Chen Lung-chu (陳隆志), the foundation's chairman and also a senior research scholar at Yale Law School, said that since the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) took power in 2000, President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) has stressed that human-rights infrastructure-building for a human-rights respecting state was one of his key policies.

However, Chen Shui-bian's efforts to establish a national human-rights committee and make the International Bill of Rights national law were both rejected by opposition parties in the legislature.

"Taiwan does need a new constitution. Advancing the levels of democracy and human-rights development in Taiwan relies on a collaborative partnership between the government and the people," Chen Lung-chu said.

Chen Lung-chu argued that Chen Shui-bian's two ideas regarding human-rights infrastructure-building for a human-rights respecting state and the people's right of initiative (創制權) must be included in any new constitutional system for Taiwan.

In addition to Taiwan's long-term unfamiliarity with international standards of human rights, experts said that, sadly, the nation's people had learned little about violence from their past misfortune and were often unaware of micro-levels of violence that are imposed by both society and the government.

According to Wu Hao-jen (吳豪人), the chairman of the Taiwan Association for Human Rights, since 2000, the DPP-led government has not effectively removed the shadow of injustice that clouds the history of many innocent people. Wu said persuasive examples include reversing miscarriages of justice imposed on victims of the "white terror" era, returning forcibly occupied mountainous land to Aborigines, and abolishing the death penalty.

The "white terror" era began in the late 1940s, when the Republic of China regime, lead by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), declared martial law and then enacted the Measures to Eradicate Espionage. Wu said that some "white terror" victims remain unable to reverse previous judgments, even after Martial Law was lifted in 1987.

"Some people whose human rights were jeopardized remain forgotten by political figures no matter which side of the political spectrum," said Wu, also an assistant professor of law at Fu Jen Catholic University.

Wu said one of the most prominent cases was the forced eviction of elderly leprosy patients from the Lo Sheng Sanatorium (樂生療養院) in Taipei County, a place they have called home for decades but is now a potential site for a future rapid transit station.

Wu said that over the past few years none of the candidates for county commissioner had even considered the patients, who have been abused simply because of their illness.

Since the 1930s, when Taiwan was still a Japanese colony, leprosy patients were "locked" in the sanatorium. Segregation ended in 1945, although the patients had nowhere else to go and chose to stay in the shelter.
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