Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers are re-proposing a draft bill on refugees.
Lawmakers tabled a draft bill on refugees in the previous legislative session, aiming to address international human rights, but it met opposition from the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus that cost the bill a chance to be discussed and reviewed.
DPP legislators Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴), Tsai Yi-yu (蔡易餘) and Yu Mei-nu (尤美女) have each proposed a version of the draft legislation on refugees, which have been referred for further deliberation in the Internal Administration Committee, and the Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee.
The Ministry of the Interior in 2005 put forward a draft refugee act, but it failed to secure passage in the legislature.
In the previous legislative session, which commenced in 2012, the Executive Yuan’s version of the draft legislation excluded Chinese and Tibetan refugees seeking asylum from the act. Hsiao and other DPP lawmakers tabled their own version, including such groups of political refugees, but it was not put to committee review.
In 2013, a version of the draft act was proposed by lawmakers across party lines, including KMT Legislator Apollo Chen (陳學聖) and DPP lawmakers. The bill was referred to the committee for review, but the session ended without the bill being put on the review agenda.
Hsiao and Yu have re-proposed the bill, along with Tsai, a newly elected lawmaker.
The three versions tabled by Hsiao, Yu and Tsai are similar, with all three having clear rules on specifying what the act is for, conditions of asylum, how refugees are defined, identification, protection and assistance for refugees, distinction between territorial and extraterritorial asylum, and the establishment of an asylum system.
Hsiao said that although Taiwan is not a member of the UN, as a member of the international community, it should make efforts to shoulder the international responsibility as other nations do, providing persecuted groups with protection, assistance and other humanitarian aid.
Yu has drafted her version of the bill with the assistance of human rights groups, aiming to work with the government in ensuring protection for refugees and stateless people within a fair, effective, appropriate and comprehensive legal framework.
Tsai said in his proposal that as regional conflicts worsen and China’s persecution of dissidents continues, Taiwan is lagging behind in its legal protection for politically persecuted refugees and in supporting immigration measures, having allowed only a few exiled Chinese dissidents to remain in Taiwan as special, one-off cases.
The three lawmakers said that insofar as Taiwan ratified two international human rights conventions in 2009 and the enforcement act was passed in the legislature, it should institutionalize the proposed protection for asylum seekers and thereby fulfill a promise that the nation is to be governed with human rights as a guiding principle.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
RSS