The Taiwan Association for Human Rights yesterday urged lawmakers to pass two proposed amendments and two bills it said were crucial for human rights protection, which have been waiting at the Legislative Yuan for years.
According to the legislature’s rules, if the amendments and bills are not passed before the lawmakers’ term ends on Jan. 31, 2020, they would be scrapped regardless of any progress, association deputy secretary-general Shih Yi-hsiang (施逸翔) told a news conference in Taipei.
Proposed amendments to the Assembly and Parade Act (集會遊行法) and the Urban Renewal Act (都市更新條例), as well as a draft “social associations act” and a draft “refugee act” have cleared their first reading at the legislature, and are awaiting second and third readings, Shih said.
In 2008, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) promised to amend the Assembly and Parade Act amid the Wild Strawberry student movement, association deputy chairman Clarence Chou (周宇修) said, adding that discussions about amending the act have been going on for more 20 years since the lifting of martial law.
“It is not just a policy problem, but a constitutional problem,” he said.
The Council of Grand Justices in 2014 ruled that two provisions in the act that require demonstrators to apply in advance under all circumstances were unconstitutional and must be amended by Jan. 1, 2015, Chou said.
Draft amendments to the act passed a review at the legislature’s Internal Administration Committee in May 2016, but have since been set aside for no obvious reason, he added.
“The right to assemble and demonstrate is important for marginalized and disadvantaged people, because they tend to be the ones without a right to vote, connections with government officials or business leaders, or the eloquence to express themselves. They need to make their voices heard by taking to the street,” he said, urging lawmakers to pass the amendments in the current or next legislative session.
Similarly, legislative review of the draft refugee act has stalled since July 2016, association secretary-general Chiu Ee-ling (邱伊翎) said.
The lack of a law to protect refugees’ rights prevents the government from offering them structural assistance, she said.
The legislature earlier this year reviewed proposed amendments to the Urban Renewal Act and a draft social associations act, but lawmakers should speed up the process to make sure the bills pass before the end of their term, the association said.
Only two more legislative sessions and perhaps one provisional session remain before the lawmakers’ term ends, Shih said.
“If the bills are not passed, the legislators should be held responsible, but if they pass them, it would leave them with a much better career record,” he added.
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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