President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) for the second time in his presidency published a national human rights report on the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) in Chinese and English.
This means that although the government cannot participate in UN events dealing with human rights affairs, it has become policy for the nation to regularly conduct assessments of its human rights performance in accordance with the regulations stipulated in the covenants so it almost fully complies with UN standards.
An official periodic international assessment of the nation’s performance according to the covenants’ standards is to be carried out in January next year.
The new government, which is to take office on May 20, should not only discontinue the human rights convention policies, it should also review the mistakes made by Ma’s administration, which has not only misunderstood the spirit of the two covenants in a myriad of ways, but also violated human rights, despite paying lip service to their importance.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the UN’s adoption of the ICCPR and ICESCR, the backbone of international human rights. However, there are still many challenges and structural impediments to human rights, including the worldwide wealth gap and uneven distribution of resources; the impunity of human rights violators; forced evictions in cities and rural areas and continuously shrinking space for society.
Taiwanese society and the public face the same challenges. It is little wonder that the UN Human Rights Council has said that with such harsh challenges, there is really no reason not to approve the covenants. Not only did the government ratify the Act to Implement the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (公民與政治權利國際公約及經濟社會文化權利國際公約施行法) in 2009 to show its intention to abide by and implement the covenants, it also passed the Enforcement Act of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (消除對婦女一切形式歧視公約施行法), the Implementation Act of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (兒童權利公約施行法) and the Act to Implement the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (身心障礙者權利公約施行法).
The two covenants encompass nearly all of the basic human rights listed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights issued in 1948.
In addition, they turned the items specified in the declaration into legal documents that provide the lowest standard in civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights.
However, because Taiwanese society is involved in controversy over whether to maintain capital punishment, with the media misleading the public with simplistic commentary on what the covenants are about and the government failing to promote the essence of the covenants, discussions of the issues have been reduced to capital punishment alone.
Even Ma’s national report focuses only on the fate of convicted Taipei MRT killer Cheng Chieh (鄭捷) and whether the two covenants demand the abrogation of capital punishment. Moreover, Ma said that it is a grave mistake to think that signing the covenants means that capital punishment must be abolished, thereby relieving himself of responsibility for having been in charge while numerous prisoners were executed, a violation of the spirit of the covenants.
He even went on to say, quite illogically, that the Republic of China (ROC) “never left the UN, but only lost its right of representation,” while claiming that the many UN resolutions demanding that its member states halt the death penalty are not legally binding.
So on one hand, Ma does not want to follow the UN’s rules, while on the other, he wants it to be known that the ROC is still a member of the UN.
This is hypocrisy at its most prominent.
Whether the previous death sentences carried out in Taiwan complied with the strict restrictions stipulated in articles 6 and 14 of the ICCPR is certainly an important issue to look at in the regular assessment of human rights performance.
However, there are many other issues that need to be examined, such as the draft national human rights commission institutional act that continues to be blocked by Vice President Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) and remains in the Presidential Office Human Rights Consultative Committee, the nuclear waste stored on Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼) — home of the Tao — and other Aboriginal rights issues such as the right to economic and cultural self-determination and the full implementation of the Indigenous Peoples Basic Law (原住民基本法).
In addition, almost all important human rights issues in Taiwan are directly related to the upcoming regular assessment. These issues include the protection of foreign workers’ rights, over-population and medical care problems in prisons, matters concerning stateless people and Tibetans-in-exile, as well as the most recent issue of transitional justice and amendments to the Archives Act (檔案法).
Precisely because the two covenants involve so many issues, many sectors of society are preparing a shadow report, which will soon be published, in response to the national report. The shadow report is to serve as a whole-body checkup of the government’s performance in relation to the two covenants over the past four years.
Ma had the nerve to say that the protection of human rights is as vital as the sun and oxygen; the public’s report is set to prove that this hypocrite government has allowed pollution to seriously harm the air that the public breathes.
Shih Yi-hsiang is vice secretary-general of the Taiwan Association for Human Rights.
Translated by Ethan Zhan
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