Independent Legislator Freddy Lim (林昶佐) yesterday said that he would propose a bill calling for the government to return the confiscated property or financial assets of those convicted of rebellion or sedition during the White Terror and Martial Law eras.
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has made progress in implementing transitional justice by passing laws since 2016, but its efforts have yet to address the assets owned by those wrongfully convicted of rebellion or sedition that were confiscated by the government, Lim said.
The core of transitional justice is to “return things to how they were” he said, adding that only the Act Governing the Recovery of Damage of Individual Rights During the Period of Martial Law (戒嚴時期人民受損權利回復條例) mentions returning confiscated assets to their original owners.
Other legislation simply says that the government may compensate the falsely accused individual, or their surviving kin and family, with cash payments, he said.
The act states that the aggrieved party must have had property confiscated because they were convicted of crimes of rebellion or sedition, and they must have been found not guilty, before the government can return their property, he said.
This stipulation has resulted in people who had property or assets confiscated because they were convicted under the Punishment of Rebellion Act (懲治叛亂條例) or other laws being unable to petition the government to return their property, Lim said.
People benefiting from Article 6, Subparagraph 3 of the Act on Promoting Transitional Justice (促進轉型正義條例), who had the charges filed against them dropped or their guilty verdict repealed, are also unable to petition the government to return their property, he said.
Lim’s draft says that people who have had their property or assets confiscated by the government because they were accused of rebellion, sedition, and contravening the Punishment of Rebellion Act and the now-defunct Suppression of the Communist Rebellion Act (戡亂時期檢肅匪諜條例) between Aug. 15, 1945, and Nov. 6, 1992, can present evidence and petition the government to return their property within a year of the proposed bill’s passage.
The individuals must have received a not guilty verdict, had the charges against them dropped, or had their guilty verdict repealed, as per Article 6, Subparagraph 3 of the Act on Promoting Transitional Justice, the proposal says.
A small number of Taiwanese this year lost their citizenship rights after traveling in China and obtaining a one-time Chinese passport to cross the border into Russia, a source said today. The people signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of neighboring Russia with companies claiming they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, the source said on condition of anonymity. The travelers were actually issued one-time-use Chinese passports, they said. Taiwanese are prohibited from holding a Chinese passport or household registration. If found to have a Chinese ID, they may lose their resident status under Article 9-1
Taiwanese were praised for their composure after a video filmed by Taiwanese tourists capturing the moment a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck Japan’s Aomori Prefecture went viral on social media. The video shows a hotel room shaking violently amid Monday’s quake, with objects falling to the ground. Two Taiwanese began filming with their mobile phones, while two others held the sides of a TV to prevent it from falling. When the shaking stopped, the pair calmly took down the TV and laid it flat on a tatami mat, the video shows. The video also captured the group talking about the safety of their companions bathing
PROBLEMATIC APP: Citing more than 1,000 fraud cases, the government is taking the app down for a year, but opposition voices are calling it censorship Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday decried a government plan to suspend access to Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu (小紅書) for one year as censorship, while the Presidential Office backed the plan. The Ministry of the Interior on Thursday cited security risks and accusations that the Instagram-like app, known as Rednote in English, had figured in more than 1,700 fraud cases since last year. The company, which has about 3 million users in Taiwan, has not yet responded to requests for comment. “Many people online are already asking ‘How to climb over the firewall to access Xiaohongshu,’” Cheng posted on
A classified Pentagon-produced, multiyear assessment — the Overmatch brief — highlighted unreported Chinese capabilities to destroy US military assets and identified US supply chain choke points, painting a disturbing picture of waning US military might, a New York Times editorial published on Monday said. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s comments in November last year that “we lose every time” in Pentagon-conducted war games pitting the US against China further highlighted the uncertainty about the US’ capability to intervene in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. “It shows the Pentagon’s overreliance on expensive, vulnerable weapons as adversaries field cheap, technologically
RSS