On Dec. 9, 1998, one day before International Human Rights Day, the British government acted on a request from the Spanish government and arrested former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, who was undergoing medical treatment in London at the time.
On the next day, International Human Rights Day, Taiwan executed a death row inmate surnamed Chuang (
Only one day after the British government made a rarely seen political move to demonstrate that it took human rights seriously, the Taiwan government snubbed a humble request from an inmate's family members and demonstrated its efficiency in execution.
To be fair, even the most fussy observer will agree that Taiwan's human rights situation has seen obvious improvement over the past 20 years, especially in civil and political rights.
The improvement, of course, has much to do with the liberalization and democratization process, from the legalization of an opposition movement to the lifting of martial law, and from constitutional amendments and parliamentary reforms to direct presidential elections.
On Dec. 10 this year, the government inaugurated a human rights monument on Green Island. President Lee Teng-hui (
However, if we really want to take a step further in realizing human rights and preventing a repeat of the White Terror experience, then we need to revamp our system to improve and ensure human rights.
On the legal side, there are two directions that deserve serious government consideration:
First, as regards the actual contents of the laws, Taiwan needs to make an all-round comparison with existing international human right conventions and consider the fundamental differences between them and Taiwan's laws and regulations. These conventions should be used as bottomline standards in the amendment or enactment of Taiwan's laws.
This will put Taiwan's legislation and law enforcement on track with the tremendous developments in international human rights trends over the past several decades. It will also prepare Taiwan for signing international human rights conventions and joining related organizations.
Second, the Taiwan government still does not have a dedicated human rights agency. In recent years, the UN has been encouraging all countries to establish "national human rights commissions" to promote human rights legislation, supervise their enforcement and carry out human rights education.
The Taiwan government should also think seriously about setting up such a commission, or an independent ministerial-level agency. In terms of function and responsibility, international human rights regulations and legislation from other countries can serve as good sources of reference.
After a systematic survey of legislation, the commission could then propose a draft bill to the Legislative Yuan for review.
On the enforcement side, the commission could conduct regular reviews, publish human rights reports and gather information on systemic defects and major cases of human rights violation.
On the education side, the commission could promote the compilation of teaching materials on human rights education and providing training for teachers.
When it comes to handling individual cases, the commission would be able to provide even more human rights advocacy work if it was endowed with independent investigative powers similar to those of prosecutors or the Control Yuan.
In the international arena, the commission could become a voice for Taiwan on international human rights issues, a window for gathering global human rights information, and even a driving force in promoting related international conventions and organizations.
Taiwan witnessed the Kao-hsiung Incident on Dec. 10, 1979.
Now, twenty years later, the Taiwan government has enacted a monument and apologized for human rights violations.
But we hope our new president will no longer need to apologize next Dec. 10. Instead, we hope he can proudly announce the establishment of a national human rights commission -- an historic step in Taiwan's bidding farewell to the 20th Century.
Hwang Jau-yuan is an associate professor of law at National Taiwan University.
In their New York Times bestseller How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt said that democracies today “may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders. Many government efforts to subvert democracy are ‘legal,’ in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy — making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process.” Moreover, the two authors observe that those who denounce such legal threats to democracy are often “dismissed as exaggerating or
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus in the Legislative Yuan has made an internal decision to freeze NT$1.8 billion (US$54.7 million) of the indigenous submarine project’s NT$2 billion budget. This means that up to 90 percent of the budget cannot be utilized. It would only be accessible if the legislature agrees to lift the freeze sometime in the future. However, for Taiwan to construct its own submarines, it must rely on foreign support for several key pieces of equipment and technology. These foreign supporters would also be forced to endure significant pressure, infiltration and influence from Beijing. In other words,
“I compare the Communist Party to my mother,” sings a student at a boarding school in a Tibetan region of China’s Qinghai province. “If faith has a color,” others at a different school sing, “it would surely be Chinese red.” In a major story for the New York Times this month, Chris Buckley wrote about the forced placement of hundreds of thousands of Tibetan children in boarding schools, where many suffer physical and psychological abuse. Separating these children from their families, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) aims to substitute itself for their parents and for their religion. Buckley’s reporting is
Last week, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), together holding more than half of the legislative seats, cut about NT$94 billion (US$2.85 billion) from the yearly budget. The cuts include 60 percent of the government’s advertising budget, 10 percent of administrative expenses, 3 percent of the military budget, and 60 percent of the international travel, overseas education and training allowances. In addition, the two parties have proposed freezing the budgets of many ministries and departments, including NT$1.8 billion from the Ministry of National Defense’s Indigenous Defense Submarine program — 90 percent of the program’s proposed
RSS