A coalition of civic groups yesterday criticized the government’s judicial reform as ineffective, saying that many changes proposed by the National Congress on Judicial Reform a year ago have barely been implemented.
Since the congress was convened on the orders of President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) in August last year, the government has begun working on a number of draft bills and amendments based on its suggestions, yet measures that do not require any new laws remain far from being implemented, Judicial Reform Foundation (JRF) chairman Lin Yung-sung (林永頌) told a news conference in Taipei.
The inefficiency of the reform is due to opposition from within the judicial system, Lin said.
“Apparently, most people within the system are against reform and the heads of agencies have decided to side with the bureaucrats, rather than the people,” he said.
The JRF and a dozen other civic groups, including the Garden of Hope Foundation (GHF), Taiwan Association for Human Rights and the Red Cross, said that the government for has disregarded many of the National Congress’ resolutions.
For example, the National Police Agency has not established committees on police education and performance evaluation, as suggested by the congress, they said, adding that it has only been willing to hold consultations nature on the issue.
The committees had been recommended as part of a solution to the existing performance evaluation system, which is not only ineffective, but leads to police officers being overworked, they said.
Meanwhile, law enforcement has continued to violate the principle of keeping investigations confidential, ignoring the congress’ advice, they said.
Last month, pictures, police footage and personal information of a 10-year-old suspect in an alleged fraud case were published by a number of media after being leaked by police, they said.
When the JRF reported the leak to the National Police Agency, it said that the police station did not find any evidence of misconduct by its officers, the groups added.
The government has adopted a number of policies suggested by the congress, but it needs to ensure that they are implemented, they said.
For example, the Judicial Yuan in October last year established a committee to protect children’s rights and gender equality based on a congress resolution, but whether it will help depends on how the committee will be run, they said.
Many judges and prosecutors still lack gender awareness and do not understand the complexity of sexual assault, GHF chief executive Chi Hui-jung (紀惠容) said.
“A prosecutor asked a female migrant worker who had been sexually assaulted why she did not bite the man’s genitals and why she did not immediately call for help,” Chi said. “He was unable to comprehend the vulnerable situation that she was in — the language barrier, her doubts about the reliability of our judicial system and that she lived in her employer’s house.”
More education on such issues is urgently needed for judges and prosecutors, she added.
“If the government was a manufacturer, what it is doing at the moment would be equivalent to disregarding quality control and turning a blind eye to customer complaints,” Lin said.
To regain the public’s trust, the government must follow through on judicial reform, he said.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS