The Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) National Policy Foundation think tank is today to appeal to the international community regarding what it called an “illegal and unconstitutional” bill on the promotion of transitional justice, in an apparent bid to pressure the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) into shelving the bill.
An international press conference is to be held in Taipei that invites KMT lawmakers, lawyers and academics to discuss whether the scope of the bill is suitable.
“It is our opinion that the bill is not conducive to easing the social divide, but rather would aid and abet hatred and confrontation and might even be unconstitutional,” the foundation said in its press invitation.
Given that the bill could degenerate into a tool for violating human rights and instigating political struggle, the foundation could not help but be pessimistic about where the law might take Taiwan, it said.
The legislature is to deliberate on the bill clause by clause at a plenary session scheduled for tomorrow, with clauses that fail to obtain a consensus to be put to a vote. There have been calls for the bill to clear the legislative floor before Human Rights Day on Sunday next week.
After the bill passed a legislative committee review in June last year, its legislative process has been stalled due to a number of disagreements among legislative caucuses.
One of the main disagreements is between the DPP and KMT caucuses regarding the period covered by the bill.
The DPP’s version limits the time frame of the authoritarian era from 1945 — when the Republic of China government retreated to Taiwan — to 1992, when the Period of National Mobilization for Suppression of the Communist Rebellion (動員戡亂時期) ended.
However, the KMT seeks to redress the rights of victims of injustice from the Dutch period, about 400 years ago.
The reason the KMT turned to the international community is because it is difficult for it to block the DPP from railroading the bill, KMT Culture and Communications Committee director-general Lee Ming-hsien (李明賢) said.
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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