The Legislative Yuan yesterday passed a third reading of the Cultural Basic Act (文化基本法), which requires “cultural impact assessments” to be rendered when the nation is formulating a policy, law or project.
The act stipulates that culture — including the right to create and participate in cultural activities — is a basic right and the nation should introduce cultural policies that promote diversity, protect the right to self-determination of different ages and ethnic groups, and facilitate international dialogue.
The nation is obligated to guarantee and promote people’s freedom of creation and expression, intellectual property rights, as well as their right to civil participation in the making of cultural policies, the act says.
Photo: Chien Jung-feng, Taipei Times
People have the right to choose the language in which they want to communicate or create, it says.
Sign language, as well as the “natural languages” used by all ethnic groups and peoples, should be accorded the same status as national languages, thereby facilitating efforts to preserve them, the act says.
Cultural workers’ and artists’ rights to survival and work should be protected, it says, adding that excellence should be respected and commended by the nation.
The Executive Yuan should hold cultural meetings to set national cultural development plans based on the nation’s cultural policy direction and society’s needs, the act says.
The meetings are to be presided over by the premier and attended by experts, academics, ministers and heads of local cultural authorities, it says.
Cultural impact assessments should be rendered at the meetings when the nation is formulating major policies, laws or projects, the act says.
The Ministry of Culture, which is in charge of planning cultural affairs on a national level, may ink contracts with local governments to jointly push forward cultural affairs, it says.
The ministry should convene a quadrennial National Cultural Conference, where it should collect public opinions and discuss policies to promote cultural affairs across the nation, the act says.
Local governments should put in place standing mechanisms to allow residents to participate in the formulation of cultural policies and hold regional cultural conferences every four years, it says.
The nation should establish a public broadcasting group that creates diversified content to facilitate freedom of expression, with funding coming from a cultural development fund allocated by the Ministry of Culture, the act says.
To ensure full autonomy of the public broadcasting group’s operations, the nation should allocate a budget and provide a stable source of funding, thereby helping public media outlets blossom and enabling other cultural broadcasting companies to become full-fledged, it says.
In addition to ensuring sufficient personnel in the public sector to implement cultural policies, the nation may prioritize suitable foundations or other organizations in the cultural sector when granting monetary awards, issuing subsidies, making donations or contracting projects from its cultural budget, but it should respect the creative direction of the parties subsidized or entrusted with a project, the act says.
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