Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Fan Yun (范雲) and other lawmakers yesterday said that they would propose legislation to protect victims of nonconsensual dissemination of intimate images.
The legislation aimed at preventing “digital gender violence” is being introduced due to an absence of laws that offer adequate protection to victims, Fan told a news conference in Taipei.
The bill would include a mechanism for the immediate removal of private sexual images, Fan said, adding that everyone, regardless of their gender, should have autonomy over such images.
Photo: Wang Yi-sung, Taipei Times
It would also provide victims with protective services, she said.
DPP legislators Lai Pin-yu (賴品妤), Su Chiao-hui (蘇巧慧), Lin Chu-yin (林楚茵) and Rosalia Wu (吳思瑤) joined Fan and other advocates in chanting: “My sexual privacy, my choice” and “Taiwan cannot have the Nth Room” — a reference to a South Korean scandal involving blackmail, cybersex trafficking and the spread of sexually exploitative content.
When the Domestic Violence Prevention Act (家庭暴力防治法) was enacted about 20 years ago, many felt that domestic violence was a private matter of couples, Wu said, adding that without the act, people’s views would have remained unchanged.
A similar attitude prevails today toward proposals designed to guarantee “digital human rights,” she said.
No single government agency is responsible for handling matters related to the dissemination of private sexual images, Wu said, adding that the bill would make the Ministry of the Interior the competent authority.
The health, education, justice and cultural ministries, as well as the National Communications Commission, would also be tasked with responding to incidents under their purview, she said.
Su called the spread of intimate images on online platforms a new type of crime and a new class of cybercrime, for which there must be laws.
Lai said that when private images are leaked, it is often the victim who is blamed or mocked, while the perpetrator is let off lightly.
Such cases are typically handled through articles in the Criminal Code against the distribution of obscene material and slander, but the penalties for those two offenses are not very harsh, she said.
Under the Criminal Code, the distribution of obscene material is punishable by up to two years in prison and/or a fine of up to NT$90,000, while the maximum penalty for slander is a two-year sentence or a fine of up to NT$30,000.
Crimes involving the dissemination of private images have existed in Taiwan for years and would only become worse with the development of the Internet, Lai said.
“Now is the time for legislation,” she said.
Members of the Taipei Women’s Rescue Foundation and the Taiwan Alliance for Advancement of Youth Rights and Welfare were also at the news conference in support of the lawmakers’ proposal.
Foundation deputy chief executive Tu Ying-chiu (杜瑛秋) said that since 2015, when the foundation began offering consultation services on cases involving the nonconsensual spread of intimate images, it has assisted in 487 cases, about one-third of which involved people who met through the Internet or social networking apps.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching