The main reason for military service exemptions in Taiwan over the past decade has been obesity, the Ministry of the Interior said on Wednesday, amid recent scandals over conscription evasion.
About 16 percent of eligible men, or about 17,000, were exempted from compulsory service last year, the Department of Conscription Administration (DCA) said.
Over the past years, 30 percent of the exemptions had been due to obesity, the DCA said.
Photo: Liu Yong-yun, Taipei Times
Other common reasons included low intelligence aptitude scores, flat or deformed feet, irregular heartbeat and mental health conditions, it said.
The information was released amid a probe into allegations that multiple entertainers have fraudulently evaded military conscription.
Earlier this week, four actors or singers were questioned for allegedly evading military conscription. They were released on bail after they admitted to paying for falsified medical reports.
Minister of the Interior Liu Shyh-fang (劉世芳) said fake medical certificates citing high blood pressure to evade military service were “very common,” adding that other fake health reasons included psychiatric disorders, an inflammatory spinal disease related to arthritis, and a lung condition known as pneumothorax.
The interior ministry and the Ministry of National Defense are reviewing the criteria for military fitness classification, the DCA said.
Under the current rules, men with a body mass index of more than 35 qualify for exemption, the officials said, adding that the government is considering raising that threshold to 45.
In Taiwan, all eligible male citizens must enter military service for at least one year, usually around the age of 18, according to the Act of Military Service for Officers and Non-commissioned Officers of the Armed Forces (陸海空軍軍官士官服役條例).
From 2013 to 2023, compulsory military service was reduced to four months, and the exemption rate was about 20 percent to 25 percent, officials said.
When Taiwan reverted to the one-year requirement, the exemption rate dropped to 16 percent, but that was still higher than the ideal, they said.
From January to August this year, obesity again topped the list of exemption reasons, followed by foot deformities, irregular heartbeat, low cognitive scores and neurosis, data showed.
From 2015 to last year, 2,146 people were prosecuted for leaving Taiwan without approval to avoid conscription, while 572 were charged with intentionally injuring themselves or falsifying medical records to alter their eligibility.
Of those 572 cases, 125 reached the courts, with 94 resulting in prison terms of less than six months and one receiving a sentence of up to two years, data showed
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