The leader of a movement to rectify the nation’s labeling on Norwegian residency cards on Saturday vowed to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, after the Norwegian Supreme Court on Tuesday last week turned down their appeal against a lower court’s ruling.
The initiator of the “Taiwan: My Name, My Right” student movement, an Oslo-based lawyer who identifies himself as Joseph, said that he never thought the court would be unwilling to grant the petitioners even the most basic of procedural rights.
The Norwegian Directorate of Immigration has since 2010 labeled Taiwanese residents as being from Kina — the Norwegian word for China — on their residency cards.
Students in 2017 petitioned the agency to change the designation, but the directorate dismissed the appeal on the grounds that “such designation does not affect the interested party’s rights and obligations in Norway.”
The group then launched a crowdfunding campaign to bring the issue to court, raising NT$3.23 million (US$112,114 at the current exchange rate) by the time it closed on Sept. 30, 2018.
They hired lawyers and in August last year brought the case to the Oslo District Court.
After losing the first trial on April 28, two subsequent appeals were also dismissed on Sept. 11 and last week.
In each instance, judges rejected the case, saying that the plaintiffs had “no grounds for appeal.”
The group said that it has the right to a fair trial, to remediation and to privacy, among other rights, as the nationality designation does not accord with reality.
The Supreme Court has declined to comment on the case, only saying that “the Appeals Committee finds it unanimously clear that the appeal cannot proceed.”
The group in its original crowdfunding campaign had raised the possibility of appealing to the European Court of Human Rights if the suit failed within Norway’s three-tier appeal system.
Norway was a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights, which states that litigants have the right to appeal to the court within six months of exhausting the signatory’s appeal system.
The group said that it would hire more lawyers and strive to build a solid legal team before the trial.
“Leaving Norway is a brand-new start,” the group wrote on Facebook.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Sunday expressed “deep regret” at the court’s decision, saying it was “gravely concerned” about its failure to explain its reasoning or offer the students any form of remediation.
The issue involves the litigants’ right to identity, and therefore possesses substantive legal interest, it said.
It said it has instructed the nation’s representative office in Sweden to lodge a complaint with the Norwegian government.
Beijing often uses economic means to coerce governments and businesses into bending to its will and minimizing Taiwan’s status, raising concern among the international community, the ministry said.
For example, after Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo (劉曉波) was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010, Beijing halted imports of salmon from Norway, the world’s biggest producer, it said.
Taiwan last year began holding annual human rights consultations with the EU to bring issues such as the Norway case to the group’s attention, the ministry said, adding that it hopes to continue formal negotiations on the issue and keep seeking partnerships with like-minded nations.
Taiwan is Taiwan, and is not a part of the People’s Republic of China, the ministry said, adding that the case is an important question of human rights.
It said it would continue to help the affected students fight for their rights, including at the European Court of Human Rights.
China appears to have built mockups of a port in northeastern Taiwan and a military vessel docked there, with the aim of using them as targets to test its ballistic missiles, a retired naval officer said yesterday. Lu Li-shih (呂禮詩), a former lieutenant commander in Taiwan’s navy, wrote on Facebook that satellite images appeared to show simulated targets in a desert in China’s Xinjiang region that resemble the Suao naval base in Yilan County and a Kidd-class destroyer that usually docks there. Lu said he compared the mockup port to US naval bases in Yokosuka and Sasebo, Japan, and in Subic Bay
The majority of parents surveyed in northern Taiwan favor the suspension of all on-site classes at schools from the junior-high level and below amid a surge in domestic COVID-19 infections, parent groups said yesterday. About 84.4 percent of respondents in a survey of 2,912 parents in northern Taiwan, where the outbreak is the most serious, said they supported suspending classes, the Action Alliance on Basic Education, the Taiwan Parents Protect Women and Children Association, and the Taiwan Love Children Association said. The groups distributed questionnaires to parents in New Taipei City, Taipei, Keelung, Taoyuan and Hsinchu city and county from Saturday morning
ASEAN BATTLEGROUND: Japan and Australia could be drawn into Pacific tensions as China sets its sights on the Diaoyutai Islands and further beyond the first island chain Tensions between China and the US in the Indo-Pacific region are expected to intensify, the National Security Bureau and Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, recommending that Taiwan continue to emphasize its shared values and interests to encourage resistance to Chinese aggression. US commitments in the Indo-Pacific region are expected to continue unabated despite the war in Ukraine, as Beijing takes advantage of the conflict to expand its influence in the region, the agencies said in reports delivered to the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee on Sunday, ahead of a hearing yesterday on regional developments and trends. Although Russia’s invasion of
ONLINE REPORT: Confirmed cases filling out the online contact tracing report can check a box to indicate that a close contact had received a booster dose, an official said The guidelines for diagnosing COVID-19 have been revised to include people aged 65 or older who test positive with a rapid test that is confirmed by a healthcare worker, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said yesterday, as it reported 65,794 new local infections. The CECC had first announced the change on Monday, before publishing the new guidelines. Starting today, people aged 65 or older, regardless of whether they are undergoing home quarantine, home isolation or self-disease prevention, can be classified as a confirmed COVID-19 case by a healthcare professional, based on a positive result from an antigen rapid test, said