Taiwan was on Wednesday named the only country in Asia with an open civic space for a fourth consecutive year, a report published by the human rights organization Civicus said.
The report, titled People Power Under Attack 2021, said that of 26 countries and territories in Asia, Taiwan remains the only one rated as “open” for the fourth time since 2018.
Taiwanese authorities are tolerant of criticism from civil society groups, which are able to form and operate freely without hindrance, Civicus said in a statement.
Photo: Tyrone Siu, Reuters
However, there are concerns about attempts to ban books that apparently glorify Beijing and to criminalize the display of the five-star flag of the People’s Republic of China, it added.
“Further, there is a need to revise the Assembly and Parade Act, which continues to disproportionately restrict people’s right to hold protests close to specified areas, such as the Executive Yuan, courts at all levels and foreign embassies and the need to obtain approval from the government,” Civicus said.
The annual report assesses civic space based on freedom of association, peaceful assembly and expression. Each country is placed in one of five categories: open, narrowed, obstructed, repressed or closed.
The report said that the most widespread civic space restraints in at least 21 Asian countries this year has been the use of restrictive laws to criminalize and prosecute human rights defenders. Other restraints include harassment, torture or ill-treatment and the detention of journalists, advocates and critics.
Four Asian countries — China, Laos, North Korea and Vietnam — are rated as closed, while 11 are ranked as repressed and seven as obstructed. Japan, Mongolia and South Korea are rated narrowed.
In China, where civic space is closed, the government has continued to detain scores of human rights defenders for broadly defined and vaguely worded offenses, while in Hong Kong, the newly-installed National Security Law has been weaponized to target journalists and democracy advocates, the Civicus report said.
A total of 197 countries and territories were surveyed, but only 39 were rated open, down from 42 last year, while 25 countries ranked closed, up from 23, most of which are located in the Middle East and Africa.
Forty-three countries were rated obstructed, and 49 countries ranked repressed.
The report said that 88.5 percent of the world’s population live in countries rated as closed, repressed or obstructed, while only 3.1 percent live in countries ranked as open.
Established in South Africa in 1993, Civicus is a global alliance of civil society organizations and advocates dedicated to bolstering citizen action and civil society worldwide.
Its Civicus Monitor research tool provides a comprehensive assessment of the conditions for civil society in 197 countries and territories.
TRAGEDY: An expert said that the incident was uncommon as the chance of a ground crew member being sucked into an IDF engine was ‘minuscule’ A master sergeant yesterday morning died after she was sucked into an engine during a routine inspection of a fighter jet at an air base in Taichung, the Air Force Command Headquarters said. The officer, surnamed Hu (胡), was conducting final landing checks at Ching Chuan Kang (清泉崗) Air Base when she was pulled into the jet’s engine for unknown reasons, the air force said in a news release. She was transported to a hospital for emergency treatment, but could not be revived, it said. The air force expressed its deepest sympathies over the incident, and vowed to work with authorities as they
A tourist who was struck and injured by a train in a scenic area of New Taipei City’s Pingsi District (平溪) on Monday might be fined for trespassing on the tracks, the Railway Police Bureau said yesterday. The New Taipei City Fire Department said it received a call at 4:37pm on Monday about an incident in Shifen (十分), a tourist destination on the Pingsi Railway Line. After arriving on the scene, paramedics treated a woman in her 30s for a 3cm to 5cm laceration on her head, the department said. She was taken to a hospital in Keelung, it said. Surveillance footage from a
Police have issued warnings against traveling to Cambodia or Thailand when others have paid for the travel fare in light of increasing cases of teenagers, middle-aged and elderly people being tricked into traveling to these countries and then being held for ransom. Recounting their ordeal, one victim on Monday said she was asked by a friend to visit Thailand and help set up a bank account there, for which they would be paid NT$70,000 to NT$100,000 (US$2,136 to US$3,051). The victim said she had not found it strange that her friend was not coming along on the trip, adding that when she
INFRASTRUCTURE: Work on the second segment, from Kaohsiung to Pingtung, is expected to begin in 2028 and be completed by 2039, the railway bureau said Planned high-speed rail (HSR) extensions would blanket Taiwan proper in four 90-minute commute blocs to facilitate regional economic and livelihood integration, Railway Bureau Deputy Director-General Yang Cheng-chun (楊正君) said in an interview published yesterday. A project to extend the high-speed rail from Zuoying Station in Kaohsiung to Pingtung County’s Lioukuaicuo Township (六塊厝) is the first part of the bureau’s greater plan to expand rail coverage, he told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times). The bureau’s long-term plan is to build a loop to circle Taiwan proper that would consist of four sections running from Taipei to Hualien, Hualien to
RSS