Revisions to the Housing Act (住宅法) should include specific provisions to implement international treaty guarantees against discrimination and forced relocation, Taiwan Anti-Forced Eviction Alliance advocates said yesterday.
“We hope for the inclusion of protective rights, including proof of the urgency of relocation, [a provision requiring] sincere negotiations with inhabitants and a guarantee that living conditions would not be worsened after relocation,” alliance executive committee member Tien Chi-feng (田奇峰) said, condemning statements by Minister of the Interior Yeh Jiunn-rong (葉俊榮) that “residency rights” and other aspects of two international covenants would be included in the law under the ministry’s proposed set of amendments.
“Without clear language, mentions are just empty promises,” Tien said.
Protestors clashed with police outside the Ministry of the Interior last week over the issue, as a review of proposed amendments to speed up the construction of social housing continues in the Legislative Yuan’s Internal Administration Committee.
While the the Legislative Yuan in 2009 ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, critics have criticized their implementation, citing a lack of clear legal provisions to define and enforce covenant rights.
“Without a clear set of standards and content, many individual cases are addressed in accordance with residency rights,” alliance executive committee member Hsu Yi-fu (徐亦甫) said. “Even when cases go to court, a lack of clear standards in the Housing Act often means that the judiciary simply adheres to the interpretation of the executive branch.”
There was also a need for clearer standards against discrimination, he said, adding that the current law only explicitly protects disabled people.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,