Despite ratification of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Social and Cultural Rights (ICSCR), and the legislature’s passage of a law to make them legally binding, human rights activists, lawyers and students who attended a workshop on their implementation yesterday said that most of the nation’s officials and politicians still don’t know much about them.
“There are many laws in Taiwan that are actually in violation of the ICCPR and the ICSCR, but the violations are somehow not noticed,” said Huang Man-ting (黃曼婷), a university student who attended yesterday’s seminar.
For instance, township mayoral elections will be canceled after townships become districts in counties that are to be upgraded to special municipalities by the end of the year.
“Well, some lecturers in the seminar think that it’s questionable whether such a change is in accordance with the two covenants, because that’s a restriction of people’s rights to participate in politics,” he said.
Huang said both the government and the legislature supported passage of the two covenants only to please the public.
“Politicians turn a blind eye on violations either because of their ignorance or because they care more about their own political interests,” she said.
Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty executive director Lin Hsin-yi (林欣怡) panned the position of Tseng Yun-fu (曾勇夫) — who is to be sworn-in as Minister of Justice today — on the death penalty.
“Tseng said that whether capital punishment should be abolished should be decided when the public reaches a consensus, and that the ministry under his leadership would not have its own opinion,” Lin said. “This is in violation of the ICCPR because it stipulates that a signatory state should eventually abolish the death penalty.”
Tseng’s position not only violated the ICCPR, but it also went against both President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and Premier Wu Den-yih’s (吳敦義) positions, as both of them have stated that ending the death penalty is the government’s long-term policy objective, he said.
Nigel Li (李念祖), an attorney and lecturer in the seminar, agreed.
He said that although Article 6 of the ICCPR provides provisional measures to countries with the death penalty in the transitional period, the covenant’s ultimate objective is to require all signatory state parties to abolish capital punishment.
Shih Yi-hsiang (施逸翔), a research assistant at Soochow University’s department of political science, said the two covenants were ratified and enacted in such a hurry that “both the government and the people don’t really know what they are about.”
“So I think a seminar like this is a very good chance for the public — including myself — to learn more about them,” he said. “I think the government should take responsibility for educating the public about the ICCPR and the ICSCR too.”
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