Several advocacy groups for the physically challenged demonstrated outside the Central Election Commission (CEC) yesterday to back demands that all voting booths be made more accessible for the nine-in-one elections on Nov. 29.
The groups encompassed a broad spectrum of activists for disability rights, including advocates for blind, deaf, and mentally or physically challenged people. Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) advocates joined in, citing their minority status as a handicap.
Several of the activists discussed the inconveniences they faced while trying to exercise their right to vote, such as a lack of access ramps at many polling stations and tables in the voting booths being too high.
The protesters demanded that the commission publish official election pamphlet information in braille, sign language videos and audio versions.
Lin Jun-jie (林君潔), secretary-general of the New Vitality Independent Living Association, said many disabled people outside the Taipei metropolitan area struggle to find accessible facilities.
Lin called for the commission to develop plans for absentee voting to protect the rights of people with disabilities.
Peter Chang (張宗傑), executive director of the Taiwan Association for Disability Rights, said current measures that allow family members to enter a voting booth to assist someone who is physically challenged can lead to problems.
“The sad thing is that sometimes family members of a disabled person enter the voting booth and do not fill out the ballot according to that person’s wishes,” Chang said.
LGBT advocates said transgender people or cross-dressers trying to vote were often questioned about their identity.
“Some workers at voting stations even resort to methods of identification that encroach on our human rights. How can taking off a voter’s pants identify anybody?” activist Wu Ji-yi (吳芷儀) said.
The groups issued a joint statement demanding the drafting of a standard checklist for voting facilities nationwide and urging that polling station workers be properly trained so they can assist voters with disabilities.
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:
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