Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators yesterday called on the Ministry of the Interior to swiftly propose its version of a bill to protect women against stalking and harassment, with the Legislative Yuan’s Internal Administration Committee convener Yang Chen-wu (楊鎮浯) vowing to schedule a review of draft bills on the issue before Mother’s Day in May.
In many cases where women have fallen victim to stalking and harassment, the harassers were only given a slap on the wrist under the Social Order Maintenance Act (社會秩序維護法), which is insufficient to deter such actions, KMT Legislator Lin Wei-chou (林為洲) told a news conference at the Legislative Yuan.
The Domestic Violence Prevention Act (家庭暴力防治法), another law that is often cited when dealing with violence against women, addresses abuses against family members or partners living together, but is unable to protect women against being stalked, Lin said.
A number of draft bills proposed by legislators to deter stalking and harassment have passed the first reading and proceeded to the committee for review, pending the ministry’s draft bill, when a comprehensive review can be conducted, he said.
Surveys conducted by civic groups show that one out of every eight women has been harassed, with one respondent saying that she had been harassed for 35 years, KMT Legislator Alicia Wang (王育敏) said.
Being harassed is often a traumatizing experience, but existing regulations have come up short in protecting women from harassment, Wang said, as she called on the ministry to speed up its work on the draft bill and deliver it to the legislature before the end of the current session.
Hopefully, through swift passage of the bill, Taiwan would become an exemplary Asian nation in terms of protecting women against stalking and harassment, she said.
The law would protect not only women, but anyone who has been stalked, KMT Legislator John Wu (吳志揚) said.
He had proposed a bill on the issue in 2016, which stated that people who stalk or harass others should be fined NT$30,000, and those who inflict harm on others due to stalking or harassment should be given a maximum prison term of two years, Wu said.
As stalking and harassment are often the precursor of more grievous harm, women who find themselves in these situations are in need of the most protection they can get, he said, but added that existing laws are unable to offer them any protection.
If the ministry fails to propose its version of the draft bill before Mother’s Day, he would bypass the ministry to schedule a meeting to review draft bills that have already passed the first reading, Yang said.
Hopefully, the bill can be passed into law before the end of this legislative session, he 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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching