The Civil Human Rights Association yesterday said that it would launch a petition for a referendum to deny parole to those who are serving a life sentence for abusing infants or children to death.
Association founder Ken Chang (張凱鈞) told a public hearing at the Legislative Yuan in Taipei that there is a lack of administrative and legislative action to counter the increasing number of child abuse cases, adding that known cases of might only be the tip of the iceberg.
The association proposed offering subsidies to whistle-blowers and increasing the number of volunteer workers.
Photo: Chen Yun, Taipei Times
Abusing children to death is considered manslaughter, Taiwan Children’s Rights director-general Wang Wei-chun (王薇君) said.
Accusing the administrative and legislative branches of passivity, Wang called on the candidates for next year’s presidential election to pledge actionable policies regarding the issue instead of empty slogans.
It does not matter whether capital punishment could serve as a deterrent, as it is the last form of justice for abused children, Wang said.
The government should abolish capital punishment if it would not use it, Wang added.
In related news, Anti-Drunk Driving Alliance founder Lee Tai-chung (李戴忠) said that preparations for next year’s elections have skewed the legislature’s focus, adding that if the proposed amendments to the Road Traffic Management and Penalty Act (道路交通管理處罰條例) are not passed before the legislature goes into recess at the end of this month, then all efforts would have been in vain.
The proposals, which passed their third reading on March 26, include measures such as increasing traffic fines, installing ignition interlock devices on the vehicles of repeat drunk drivers, shared legal responsibility for passengers and impounding offenders’ vehicles.
However, they require the establishment of ancillary laws, which the Ministry of Transportation and Communications said it would endeavor to complete within six months.
Lee urged the ministry to consider the deaths caused by drunk drivers as manslaughter, to detain drunk drivers and impound their vehicles for three days, implement an alcohol tax on retailers for “social responsibility,” implement subrogation rights for the government to act on behalf of victims, implement automatic sequestration of property to prevent the liquidation of assets by perpetrators, and establish a driving-under-the-influence hotline.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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:
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
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