Taiwan has made considerable progress in improving its human rights situation, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said yesterday at an event marking World Human Rights Day on Thursday, with victims of political persecution among the audience.
The ceremony took place at the National Human Rights Museum and the Jing-Mei White Terror Memorial Park in New Taipei City, which was formerly a prison run by the Taiwan Garrison Command to incarcerate political dissidents.
“Taiwan has seen concrete progress in transitional justice in the past few years. People from across generations have joined the effort, achieving positive results for transitional justice, as well as to strive for more vigorous protection of human rights. These will ensure that our freedom and democracy will last into the future,” Tsai said.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
“These efforts and progress can help us face the suffering and agony of the past, and resolve to never repeat history. Then we can join together to advance forward and build a common future,” she added.
Tsai listed her administration’s accomplishments in carrying out transitional justice, such as the establishment of the Transitional Justice Commission to investigate past institutional abuses and atrocities against people to restore justice and truth, overturn wrongful convictions against victims, and disclose secret government files.
Tsai pointed to the establishment of the National Human Rights Museum two years ago to promote human rights education and document Taiwan’s progress from authoritarianism to a democratic society.
“People can see the positive results of human rights education, and also exhibits and research work at the museum. It has undertaken multifaceted programs to combine arts, literature, music and other forms to disseminate the concept of human rights in people’s daily lives,” she said.
Tsai also lauded the establishment of the National Human Rights Commission on Aug. 1, an independent agency of the Control Yuan that is tasked with probing rights violations, reviewing the implementation of human rights policies and presenting national reports on human rights.
Control Yuan President Chen Chu (陳菊) was previously a victim of political persecution, so she has empathy for the victims and their families, and for their burden of pain and pressure, Tsai said, adding: “Under Chen Chu’s leadership, I believe the commission can strengthen the protection of human rights, and pass [it] on to our future generations.”
In her address, Chen said she wants to “thank the many respected elders and victims of political persecution who came before me, because they refused to succumb under the past authoritarian one-party state. It is they who enabled Taiwan to have the energy to fight for our freedom and democracy.”
“To them and their families who suffered together, we are grateful for their agony and sacrifice — they helped make Taiwan a land of beauty and freedom — and for attaching great importance to human rights protection,” Chen said.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS