Despite the minister of justice's repeated calls to establish a national fingerprint bank, the Executive Yuan yesterday reiterated that it is against the idea because it believes such an archive would violate human rights.
"Protecting human rights is always our top priority. We won't support the proposal unless human rights groups accept it," Cabinet Spokesman Chuang Suo-hang (
Yu made the remark after Minister of Justice Chen Ding-nan (
According to Chuang, Chen used yesterday's meeting to clarify the differences between two ideas that he has proposed on the matter.
"The idea of adding fingerprints to identification cards and passports is different from that of establishing a national fingerprint bank, which I previously proposed," Chen said.
He said that adding thumbprints to ID cards and passports would help prevent theft of the documents in addition to helping identify their owners.
"[The move would] protect not only individual privacy, but also human rights," Chen said.
Minister Without Portfolio Hsu Chih-hsiung (許志雄), however, disagreed with Chen's position during the meeting.
"Although it can be useful in cracking a case, don't overly rely on fingerprint evidence," Hsu said. "Making fingerprinting mandatory infringes on human rights and individual privacy."
Hsu added that not a single democratic country in the world makes it compulsory to take the fingerprints of its citizens.
"Even Japan, which established a fingerprint bank of foreigners some 10 years ago, nullified the practice because of pressure from both home and abroad," he said.
The Executive Yuan made its stance clear on May 31 when it rejected one article in the Household Registration Law (
The article would have required that every ROC citizen over the age of 14 provide their fingerprints when issued with photo identification cards.
The proposal of establishing a national fingerprint databank was first raised in a 1997 amendment to the Household Registration Law. The proposal was later rejected because human rights groups lobbied against it.
In the wake of difficulties in identifying victims of the May 25 crash of a China Airlines jetliner, Chen rekindled the issue, saying that the database was necessary. Chen's proposal prompted the premier to ask the Ministry of the Interior to re-evaluate the idea.
The arrest earlrier this month of two suspects in the murder of former Hsinhu Elementary School teacher Wu Hsiao-hui (吳曉蕙) based on fingerprint evidence once again raised calls for the establishment of a fingerprint database.
Some law enforcement officers and lawmakers have argued that since it took the police eight years to make a breakthrough in the Wu case, human rights might actually be better protected if there was a national fingerprint database.
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