A pro-independence organization yesterday released a documentary recounting how the police used excessive force to block people from expressing their opinions and protesting during the visit of Chinese envoy Chen Yunlin (陳雲林), and said the documentary would be delivered to several international human rights organizations in the hope they would pay more attention to Taiwan’s human rights situation.
“By producing the documentary, we hope to draw the attention of international society [to the fact] that human rights in Taiwan have been seriously violated and democracy has been jeopardized during President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration,” Secretary-General of the Taiwan Society Lo Chih-cheng (羅致政) told a press conference yesterday.
The documentary was shown during the press conference. The film contained footage of national flags being taken from people carrying or waving them by police officers, police pushing protesters and people injured in clashes with police officers, and police officers rushing into a record store and forcing it to close while it was playing a patriotic Taiwanese song.
PHOTO: LO PEI-DER, TAIPEI TIMES
International human rights worker Lynn Miles said that Taiwan had been a free country.
Foreigners who visited Taiwan usually felt it was freer than many other countries. But Taiwan’s human rights were jeopardized during the Chen incident, Miles said.
He said as a human rights worker living in Taiwan for many years, he could not believe what happened during Chen’s visit.
Former Government Information Office (GIO) minister Shieh Jhy-wey (謝志偉) said Ma was schooled in the authoritarian tactics of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), and that he never really understood the ideas of human rights and democracy. Ma had done nothing in his life to promote human rights or democracy, Shieh added.
The Ma administration’s alleged misuse of the Taiwanese justice system and police to undermine human rights have drawn international criticism in recent weeks.
Freedom House — the US-based pro-Democracy group — has called for an independent investigation into violent clashes between police and activists protesting the visit to Taiwan by Chen.
The International Federation for Human Rights has also charged that arrests and violence during the visit were “grave violations of human rights under the pretext of national security,” and a substantial number of foreign experts on Taiwan called for reform in two open letters published by the Taipei Times.
Amnesty International called for the Control Yuan to conduct an independent inquiry into alleged excessive police force during the protests last month.
Kenting National Park service technician Yang Jien-fon (楊政峰) won a silver award in World Grand Prix Photography Awards Spring Season for his photograph of two male rat snakes intertwined in combat. Yang’s colleagues at Kenting National Park said he is a master of nature photography who has been held back by his job in civil service. The awards accept entries in all four seasons across six categories: architectural and urban photography, black-and-white and fine art photography, commercial and fashion photography, documentary and people photography, nature and experimental photography, and mobile photography. Awards are ranked according to scores and divided into platinum, gold and
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
BREACH OF CONTRACT: The bus operators would seek compensation and have demanded that the manufacturer replace the chips with ones that meet regulations Two bus operators found to be using buses with China-made chips are to demand that the original manufacturers replace the systems and provide compensation for breach of contract, the Veterans Affairs Council said yesterday. Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Michelle Lin (林楚茵) yesterday said that Da Nan Bus Co and Shin-Shin Bus Co Ltd have fielded a total of 82 buses that are using Chinese chips. The bus models were made by Tron-E, while the systems provider was CYE Electronics, Lin said. Lin alleged that the buses were using chips manufactured by Huawei subsidiary HiSilicon Co, which presents a national security risk if the
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