Draft conclusions of the National Congress on Judicial Reform ignore urgent gender equality and children’s rights resolutions, several members of one of the body’s subcommittees said yesterday, promising to boycott a final meeting today over the dropping of their policy recommendations.
The congress, which the Presidential Office tasked with drafting an agenda for comprehensive judicial reform, is drawing to a close after more than six months of meetings and is scheduled to present its conclusions today.
Four members of a subcommittee on “maintaining societal safety” denounced government officials, saying they pushed preset policy proposals when drafting the final agenda for today’s meeting, ignoring the group’s resolutions.
“Simply put, the government feels the congress does not have much valuable advice to offer, so officials decided to just push forward with their original agenda,” said subcommittee member Lai Fang-yu (賴芳玉), a women’s rights advocate and lawyer, adding that she felt “let down” and “ignored” by only a brief mention of “gender-friendly laws” in the final agenda.
Lai said she wrote a more than 30,000-character report detailing possible resolutions, of which the subcommittee passed several.
“I really do not understand how the meeting agenda was drafted. Was it not supposed to respect recommendations by subcommittees?” Lai said, ruling out participating in today’s meeting.
“We spent three months trying to make them listen, what difference will three minutes speaking to the president make?” she added.
“If you only want to reform judicial officials, you should call a national conference on judicial official reform,” National Chiao Tung University law professor Lin Chih-chieh (林志潔) said.
Lin criticized the meeting agenda, saying it failed to address proposals such as the passage of a “rape shield” law and decriminalizing adultery and sexual relations between consenting minors.
“We care about these issues because in our line of work we have found that the criminal justice system lacks perspective when dealing with children and different genders,” Taiwan Healthcare Reform Foundation chief executive Joanne Liu (劉淑瓊) said. “This agenda just confirms that government officials do not have any concept of the importance of these issues.”
The agenda of the original policy conference did not include gender issues, with discussion occurring only after protests, Garden of Hope Foundation chief executive Chi Hui-jung (紀惠容) said.
“Unless the Ministry of Justice says that it will address the gender equality laws we have suggested, what is the point of participating — they have already set the agenda,” Chi said. “Participating would just be a waste of time.”
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) today issued a sea warning for Typhoon Fung-wong effective from 5:30pm, while local governments canceled school and work for tomorrow. A land warning is expected to be issued tomorrow morning before it is expected to make landfall on Wednesday, the agency said. Taoyuan, and well as Yilan, Hualien and Penghu counties canceled work and school for tomorrow, as well as mountainous district of Taipei and New Taipei City. For updated information on closures, please visit the Directorate-General of Personnel Administration Web site. As of 5pm today, Fung-wong was about 490km south-southwest of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan's southernmost point.
A magnitude 5.3 earthquake struck Kaohsiung at 1pm today, the Central Weather Administration said. The epicenter was in Jiasian District (甲仙), 72.1km north-northeast of Kaohsiung City Hall, at a depth of 7.8km, agency data showed. There were no immediate reports of damage. The earthquake's intensity, which gauges the actual effects of a temblor, was highest in Kaohsiung and Tainan, where it measured a 4 on Taiwan's seven-tier intensity scale. It also measured a 3 in parts of Chiayi City, as well as Pingtung, Yunlin and Hualien counties, data showed.
Nearly 5 million people have signed up to receive the government’s NT$10,000 (US$322) universal cash handout since registration opened on Wednesday last week, with deposits expected to begin tomorrow, the Ministry of Finance said yesterday. After a staggered sign-up last week — based on the final digit of the applicant’s national ID or Alien Resident Certificate number — online registration is open to all eligible Taiwanese nationals, foreign permanent residents and spouses of Taiwanese nationals. Banks are expected to start issuing deposits from 6pm today, the ministry said. Those who completed registration by yesterday are expected to receive their NT$10,000 tomorrow, National Treasury
Taiwan next year plans to launch its first nationwide census on elderly people living independently to identify the estimated 700,000 seniors to strengthen community-based healthcare and long-term care services, the Ministry of Health and Welfare (MOHW) said yesterday. Minister of Health and Welfare Shih Chung-liang (石崇良) said on the sidelines of a healthcare seminar that the nation’s rapidly aging population and declining birthrate have made the issue of elderly people living alone increasingly pressing. The survey, to be jointly conducted by the MOHW and the Ministry of the Interior, aims to establish baseline data and better allocate care resources, he
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