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劃撥戶名：社團法人台灣人權促進會
Ministry of Justice seeks to ban death penalty
Taiwan’s government is working to remove the death penalty from the country’s statute books but there is no timetable for achieving this goal, according to Minister of Justice Wang Ching-feng Feb. 1.
“Abolishing capital punishment is an MOJ policy,” Wang said, adding that this could only be accomplished after society-wide consensus has been reached.
According to the MOJ, a 27-strong task force comprising scholars, legal experts and representatives of victims has been established to review the statute and a number of associated issues. Based on the group’s recommendations, the ministry will seek to replace the death penalty with life imprisonment, reform prison administration, further protect victims’ rights and strengthen law and order.
“Research shows that abolishing the death penalty does not lead to an increase in crime,” Wang said. “No one has been executed in Taiwan since December 2005 and the national crime rate has not risen.” Read the rest of this entry »
By Loa Iok-sin STAFF REPORTER Thursday, Jan 14, 2010, Taipei Times, Page 2
Immigrant rights advocacy groups yesterday staged a demonstration outside the National Immigration Agency (NIA), calling on the agency to sanction a junior high school teacher for allegedly making a racist remark against a student whose mother is Indonesian.
A junior high school student in Kaohsiung County’s Linyuan Township (林園) — born to a Taiwanese father and an Indonesian mother — said the teacher, Hung Yu-wen (洪裕文), last month asked if she was a “barbarian” and told her to go back to Indonesia and be a “savage” like her mother after Hung saw the student tear up a test paper.
The student said she tore up the paper because she was upset after being scolded by Hung. She said before the latest incident, she had already been subjected to Hung’s abusive remarks three times.
The Chinese-language Apple Daily yesterday reported that Hung had admitted to making several inappropriate remarks to the student, but added that he never intended to humiliate the student and his comments were meant as a joke.
Neither the student nor the immigrants rights advocates found his “jokes” funny. Read the rest of this entry »
Over one hundred independent human rights and civil society organizations from around the world have urged delegations to the United Nations to support a resolution in the General Assembly condemning human rights violations in the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI), and urging the IRI to abide by its international human rights obligations.
“Human rights conditions in Iran have deteriorated dramatically since the General Assembly’s 2008 Resolution….It is incumbent upon the international community and a matter of the utmost moral urgency to emphasize to the government of Iran that common human rights standards must be upheld,” the groups stated in their letter dated 11 November 2009.
The signatories include local groups from Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Russia, Malaysia, India, South Africa and other non-western societies, as well as global organizations including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and International Commission of Jurists. The groups expressed their concern about the killing of peaceful demonstrators, arbitrary arrests, rape, torture and ill treatment in detention, and “show trials” of those charged with serious crimes, for which they may be executed, simply for expressing their political opinions. Read the rest of this entry »
NGOs call for universal abolition of death penalty
TAIPEI, Taiwan — Several non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Taiwan called on the government and the rest of the world Saturday to take measures to abolish the death penalty, as they marked World and European Day against the Death Penalty, which also falls on Taiwan’s National Day.
The Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty (TAEDP), Human Rights Education Curriculum and Instruction Team, Humanistic Education Foundation, Taiwan Association for Human Rights, Chang Fo-chuan Human Rights Study Center of Soochow University and the European Economic and Trade Office (EETO) in Taipei made the appeal at a joint press conference.
The groups called on the public to support a global “Appeal for the End of Execution of Children in the World” initiated by World Coalition Against the Death Penalty.
A series of four workshops on the theme “See the Color of Life: Understanding the Death Penalty” was being launched the same day to train a seed group of social workers to raise awareness and widen debate on the issue, the NGOs said.
“Support for abolition of the death penalty remains an individual decision. That is why a better understanding of the issue is required in order to form an opinion, “ said Nicolas Baudouin, policy officer of the EETO’s Political and Economic Affairs, at the press conference.
Lin Chia-fang, deputy convener of TAEDP, said that although abolition of the death penalty is a very controversial issue, every human being, including prisoners sentenced to death, has a right to human dignity, which is the most basic concept of human rights.
Feng Chiao-lan,executive director of Humanistic Education Foundation, said that the death penalty is a tool used by governments to rule through fear.
“When we take someone’s life, we also trade our humanity,” she added.
As of the June 2009, 139 countries had joined the campaign against the death penalty, 55 of which have abolished capital punishment since 1990.
A “de facto moratorium” on the death penalty has been in effect in Taiwan since 2005 when the last execution was carried out.
On May 14 this year, President Ma Ying Jeou signed the ratification of International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
Baudouin said these recent developments in Taiwan are positive, as they provide a solid framework for the promotion of human rights and for further progress toward abolishing the death penalty.
World Day Against the Death Penalty annually gathers international non governmental organizations, bar associations, unions and local governments from all over the world to lobby for the abolition of the death penalty.
It was launched on Oct. 10, 2003 by the World coalition Against the Death Penalty.
In 2008, at least 2,390 people were executed in 25 countries, while more than 8,800 people were sentenced to death in 52 countries, the press release said, adding that 93 percent of all known executions took place in five countries — China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the U.S. and Pakistan.
source: http://www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/national/national-news/2009/10/11/228151/NGOs-call.htm
An NIA branch that’s above the law
By Kao Jung-chih 高榮志
Monday, Sep 21, 2009, Page 8
‘A brief investigation of the Special Operation Corps shows us that it has close to absolute executive and judicial power — the kind of power that is bound to lead to absolute corruption sooner or later.’
In a speech to mark Lawyers’ Day on Sept. 9, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said that “absolute power corrupts absolutely,” adding that he was always aware of this and constantly reminded himself to fully respect the separation of powers and governmental checks and balances.
The executive branch, he said, would respect the independence of the legislature and never interfere in the judiciary.
At almost the same time, prosecutors were searching the office of the head of the National Immigration Agency’s (NIA) Special Operation Corps in Taichung, collecting evidence and applying to have him detained on charges of sexual harassment.
A brief investigation of the Special Operation Corps shows us that it has close to absolute executive and judicial power — the kind of power that is bound to lead to absolute corruption sooner or later.
The Special Operation Corps is a department of the NIA, which in turn falls under the Ministry of the Interior. It therefore has executive powers, principally to investigate foreigners — in most cases foreign migrant workers and people from China residing illegally in Taiwan — and to detain and deport them.
It goes without saying that people residing illegally within a nation’s borders — be it through illegal immigration, fake marriages or by working illegally — have to be detained for a certain period between the conclusion of the investigation and the time of their deportation.
This detention is authorized by an administrative measure: Article 38 of the Immigration Act (入出國及移民法) calls it temporary detention, which in principle limits detention to 60 days, although it can be extended “if necessary.”
At first glance there is nothing obviously wrong with the terms of the law, but implementation is another matter altogether.
First, detention is in reality a limitation on the individual freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution.
Regardless of whether it is prettified by calling it protection, detention, or imprisonment, it is still a matter of locking people up and, in the case of migrants, there is no judicial intervention in the decision to lock people up.
This in itself can be said to be a flaw in the formulation of this law.
Even more absurd, the NIA often turns the exception into the rule by extending “temporary” detention beyond 60 days. Not surprisingly, this situation has repeatedly been a target for criticism by Taiwanese and overseas human rights advocacy groups.
In practice, the Specialized Operation Corps is in charge of detentions. It catches illegal residents, locks them up and decides whether to extend their detention.
The Specialized Operation Corps thus has a great number of functions rolled into one.
Even in the case of people suspected of committing serious crimes, prosecutors are required to apply to a court for approval to keep them in detention, and their detention can only be extended once, for a maximum of four months.
The Specialized Operation Corps, on the other hand, does not need the approval of a judge and detainees are not given the protection of any procedure for arguing their case before their detention is extended.
The corps can detain people indefinitely without giving any reason, which grants it unbridled power over migrant workers.
This situation makes a complete mockery of the constitutional principle of checks and balances on power.
In addition, one can imagine how detainees will bow their heads and swallow any insult to avoid offending the Specialized Operation Corps to ensure that their return home proceeds smoothly.
This gives the corps exclusive control over the lives of detainees.
Short-term detention before deportation may be fine, but if a detainee is suspected of criminal involvement, and as long as his treatment does not fall below the standards set out in the Code of Criminal Procedure, suspicions that detention can be replaced by administrative measures may be temporarily ignored.
Some foreigners held in long-term detention are in fact witnesses to, or even victims of, crime, but languish in jail while the wheels of justice grind on at a snail’s pace — just to ensure that they will appear as witnesses in court.
Of course, not everything about the Specialized Operation Corps is negative. It has a small number of staff who must deal with a lot of tasks. In that respect, they are deserving of sympathy.
The problems, however, are more widespread and ultimately it is prejudice that is to blame.
Many Taiwanese believe that human rights do not fully apply in the case of people from Southeast Asia or China.
As long as such attitudes persist, it should come as no surprise if the abuse of human rights continues.
Kao Jung-chih is a lawyer and an executive board member of the Taiwan Association for Human Rights.
TRANSLATED BY JULIAN CLEGG
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2009/09/21/2003454112
Taiwan Indigenous Peoples against “Typhoon Morakot Post-disaster Recovery Regulation”
The August 8th floods seriously struck southern Taiwan. It devastated the indigenous tribes by taking our people’ lives away, demolishing our houses and lands, leaving our livelihood in dire circumstances. The crisis of future cultural inheritance is unprecedented.
Most of the disaster areas this time are the traditional territories of indigenous peoples. In the early days, many indigenous tribes were moved in cooperation with national policies or due to the social environment at that time. Some of them were moved because they were oppressed and then settled at where they live now. The essence of indigenous peoples’ peaceful coexistence with Nature is how they build up a great affection and close interactions with their land to develop their own cultural customs and meanings of life. However, led by inappropriate policies, the external syndicates collude with the government officials to abuse and destroy the land and leave the disastrous effect to the indigenous peoples. Now they even have to fear for cultural genocide brought by forced eviction. It is indeed another disaster and violation of the indigenous peoples’ collective rights to development. As the Would Council of Indigenous Peoples noted in 1985, “Next to shooting indigenous peoples, the surest way to kill us is to separate us from our part of the earth.” Read the rest of this entry »
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2009/07/23/2003449379
By Lin Feng-jeng 林峰正
Thursday, Jul 23, 2009, Page 8 On July 13, Aboriginal folk singer Panai (巴奈) performed at a press conference organized by academics and social activists to symbolically “surrender” under the Assembly and Parade Act (集會遊行法). More than 120 academics and social activists decided to turn themselves in to prosecutors for breaking the assembly law in a show of support for two professors who have been indicted for contravening the same act. Before singing, Panai asked who should turn themselves in. The government should turn itself in, she said, and broke into song, playing her guitar. Panai’s music deeply moved those present.
Taiwan Association for Human Rights chairman Lin Chia-fan (林佳範) was indicted last month for standing outside the legislature and reading a eulogy for the Assembly and Parade Act.
National Taiwan University (NTU) sociology professor Lee Ming-tsung (李明璁) was indicted in May for supporting members of the Wild Strawberry Student Movement at a peaceful sit-in against proposed amendments to the act that are unconstitutional and would limit freedom of speech and assembly. The professors were expressing their disdain for an outdated and unacceptable law through non-violent, civil disobedience.
Freedom of assembly and association are ensured in Article 14 of our Constitution and on March 31, the legislature approved the ratification of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the latter of which guarantees the rights of our people to assemble and protest peacefully.
On May 14, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) signed both covenants at a press conference at the Taipei Guest House in front of domestic and foreign journalists.
The implementation regulations for the covenants state that the government should identify and review any laws or administrative procedures that violate the covenants within two years. The Assembly and Parade Act should be first up for review. It is a relic of authoritarian rule.
The prosecutors responsible for indicting the professors were unwise: They hastily charged the pair under Article 29 of the Assembly and Parade Act, even though it may soon be scrapped. This attracted strong opposition from academics, prompting the biggest protest movement within years from the academic circle.
Support for the protest quickly grew. Participants dared prosecutors to indict them, too, admitting that they had engaged in similar actions to Lee and Lin. The Judicial Reform Foundation gathered more than 50 lawyers in no time to back up the protest.
Are we supposed to believe that the prosecutors are unaware that the assembly law violates the Constitution? At the press conference, Lii Ding-tzann (李丁讚), a sociology professor from National Tsing Hua University, said he believed prosecutors were using Lin and Lee as an example to intimidate people into “choosing” to keep their criticism of public matters to themselves. Huang Jui-ming (黃瑞明), chairman of the Judicial Reform Foundation, who put together a team of lawyers to join the protest, said he suspected politics was influencing the judiciary in more than one way.
The movement had one goal — to express dissatisfaction. The participants are protesting an unjust law and political meddling with judges and prosecutors. The academics that participated come from various backgrounds. They included NTU law professors Yen Chueh-an (顏厥安), Lin Yu-hsiung (林鈺雄) and Chen Chao-ju (陳昭如), all of whom said they knowingly “broke” the law.
All the participants had a clear conscience and were not afraid of facing prosecutors.
As I watched each person turn themselves in by adding their names, academic institution and department to a list, I wanted to ask everyone in Taiwan the same question that Panai asked: Just who should be turning themselves in?
Lin Feng-jeng is a lawyer and executive director of the Judicial Reform Foundation.
TRANSLATED BY DREW CAMERON
By Liu Ching-yi, Lai Chung-chiang, Huang Kuo-chang 劉靜怡 賴中強 黃國昌
Monday, Jul 20, 2009, Page 8 On June 3, shortly before the end of the last legislative session, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus tabled its latest proposed amendment to the Assembly and Parade Act (集會遊行法). It publicized the proposal the next day, claiming to have considered criticism and opinions from civic groups and opposition parties. In reality, however, the draft is full of proposals designed to suppress civil freedoms while giving the police room to abuse their powers. This draft is far removed from what civic groups want, namely a guarantee to the public’s right to hold assemblies and parades.
The draft contains a number of absurdities, which are summed up in the following six points:
One, why can’t we demonstrate in front of the Executive Yuan?
The Executive Yuan is the seat of the Cabinet and is the nation’s highest executive body. Policies, draft legislation and the budgets of all ministries have to be sent there for approval. If people are unhappy with government policy, where are they supposed to protest if not at the Executive Yuan? Article 6 of the draft proposes a ban on assemblies and parades in a restricted zone with a radius of 300m around the building so the Cabinet mandarins cannot hear the voices of protest.
Two, while the draft says advance notice must be given for demonstrations, it actually means permission would be needed.
The KMT keeps saying arrangements for assemblies and parades will be changed to an advance notice system. However, Article 9 of the draft says that, when giving advance notice, organizers must show an agreement signed by whoever is responsible for managing the demonstration venue. That would be understandable if it referred only to private venues and non-public spaces. But why should people have to apply for permission from government departments for gatherings in places such as Liberty Square and Ketagalan Boulevard? How does that differ from the current law? Is that what the KMT calls “giving the streets back to the people?”
Three, do protests by civil groups cause more disruption than religious processions?
Every year there are a number of processions where statues of Matsu are carried around the countryside. Sometimes hundreds of thousands of people take part in these parades, which travel from town to town along major roads for up to eight days. We have never heard that these processions cause unrest because organizers do not give prior notice. In the case of the Baishatun (白沙屯) Matsu procession, the route can’t be reported in advance because organizers cast divination chips at each intersection to ask the deity which way to go. Article 4 of the KMT’s draft says prior notice is not needed for religious activities, but makes it compulsory for processions of a political or social nature.
Four, police can order demonstrators to disperse, making them both player and referee.
Maintaining order at gatherings means tough work and long hours for the police, so it is not surprising if they develop a confrontational attitude toward participants. Article 24 of the draft calls on the police to decide for themselves whether a gathering or march is seriously disrupting traffic or threatens national security and needs to be dispersed, and then allows them to disperse the gathering by force if necessary. This would confer on the police the triple powers of administrative, judicial and executive officials.
Five, if people are not violent, why should they be ordered to disperse because of their association with those who are?
If some people behave violently at a peaceful march or gathering, the police should help the event’s marshals to remove the offenders, rather than ordering everyone to disperse. Article 24 of the KMT draft gives police broad powers to issue and enforce dispersal orders, but does not restrict police from using force to disperse people attending a peaceful assembly. This would mean that, as soon as they have issued the usual three orders to leave the area, the police with shields and batons could start forcing every participant to leave.
Forcefully dispersing people attending a peaceful gathering is nothing other than the ancient concept of punishment by association. It flies in the face of the notion of proportional response, with no respect for human rights.
In constitutional interpretation No. 445, the Council of Grand Justices ruled that regulations about dispersing public gatherings are unconstitutional, asking rhetorically: “In respect of the ‘likelihood that public safety or freedom will be jeopardized, or there will be serious damage to property,’ is it appropriate to deny other participants the right to hold an assembly or a parade if merely a couple of participants have acted to that effect?”
For the KMT to push for this kind of medieval collective punishment in the 21st century is ridiculous.
Six, the police have even greater powers than judges to impose penalties.
Although the KMT draft abolishes criminal penalties for public order infringements, it replaces them with administrative penalties, giving police stations the power to directly impose fines of up to NT$200,000. This would give the police even more power than they have now to ride roughshod over civil rights.
At present, people accused of violating Article 29 of the Assembly and Parade Act have to be formally charged by prosecutors and have their cases heard by district courts to determine guilt or innocence before a penalty is imposed. If found guily, they are entitled to appeal to the High Court. In practice, even when found guilty, offenders are usually punished with a jail sentence of a few weeks, or six months at most, convertible to a fine.
Even if someone is sentenced to six months in jail, when converted into a fine — at the rate of NT$1,000 per day — it only comes to NT$183,000. Such a fine can only be imposed after formal indictment and a public trial with leave to appeal. The KMT’s draft, however, would empower the chief officer of a police precinct to impose a fine of NT$200,000 with no trial and no appeal. These unbridled powers exceed those of a judge.
We call on the KMT to change track and sincerely try to implement the basic right to take part in assemblies and parades, as enshrined in our Constitution and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which the government recently ratified. If the KMT persists in trying to push through fake reforms, the public will eventually see through their devious tactics.
Liu Ching-yi is an executive board member of the Taiwan Association for Human Rights. Lai Chung-chiang is an executive board member of the Platform for the Defense of Democracy. Huang Kuo-chang is a standing executive board member of the Judicial Reform Foundation.
TRANSLATED BY JULIAN CLEGG http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2009/07/20/2003449120
Activists, academics ‘surrender’ to protest law
By Loa Iok-sin STAFF REPORTER Tuesday, Jul 14, 2009, Taipei Times, Page 1
Members of Academia Sinica, professors and social activists attend a press conference in Taipei yesterday to protest against the Assembly and Parade Act and show their support for Lee Ming-tsung and Lin Chia-fan, who face charges under the act. PHOTO: LO PEI-DER, TAIPEI TIMES
More than 120 academics and human rights activists said yesterday they would turn themselves in to prosecutors for breaking the Assembly and Parade Act (集會遊行法) in a protest against the legislation.
One after another, more than 30 people gave their name and occupation at a press conference in Taipei, telling prosecutors that they had violated the Act and would like to turn themselves in.
They did so in a show of support for National Taiwan University (NTU) sociology professor Lee Ming-tsung (李明璁) and Taiwan Association for Human Rights chairman Lin Chia-fan (林佳範), who have been indicted for contravening the Act in May and last month respectively.
Read the rest of this entry »
Joint Statement of Taiwanese Civil Society 10th July, 2009
China: Stop armed force oppression in East Turkistan (Xinjiang) and open to independent investigation
A mass scale of unrest occurred in East Turkistan (Xinjiang) during the night of July 5th. According to the Chinese media, it has caused 156 deaths, 1080 injured, and 1434 arrested up till the evening of the 6th and expanded to conflicts between Uyghur and Han people afterwards. Conflicts between civilians and the police as well as violent incidents have been reported in both Urumqi and Kashgar, the two main cities of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Authority in Urumqi announced a curfew since the night of the 7th. For now, the security level within the autonomous region has been raised to the level of Beijing Olympic.
Unlike practices of blocking information channels regarding unrests in Tibet during March 2008, the Chinese authority has proactively published the statistics of the casualties, and further granted access for international media such as AFP and AP. However, according to released information from Xinhua News, the Chinese authority still categorizes the incident as “a planned, organized violent crime remotely controlled and conducted from extra-territorial and carried out by specific organization within the territory.” It has not mentioned the causes neither what actually happened during the incident. Meanwhile, although international media were granted with access to conduct interviews, most areas are still restricted and controlled. Internet communication is likewise blocked and some foreign journalists were confirmed to be shortly detained.
Taiwanese Civil Society is aware of its particular moral duty and has been constantly monitoring human rights in China and supporting Chinese human rights defenders. Concerning China as a powerful actor of human rights violation in this region, and in view of the blood-drenched Tibetan Uprising last March, we, the undersigned organizations call on the Chinese government to:
Stop the armed oppression against the civilians immediately and strictly restrained itself from using armed police force during violent conflicts: The United Nation, the White House and international human rights organizations including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have urged China to restrain the usage of the armed police force. China should immediately response to this request and to comply with the UN Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials.
Grant access to international media to conduct free and independent interviews within the autonomous region, to find out facts of the incident: China should open up for international media to conduct interviews independently without being limited in the controlled areas. China also needs to remove its cramp on internet communication immediately. Moreover, concerned by the fact that the former UN High Commissioner on Human Rights, Lousie Arbour had been continually rejected by Chinese government to conduct investigations in Tibet, China should respond to the urge from international society, to invite current UN High Commissioner, Navanethem Pillay to enter the Xinjiang autonomous region for investigations.
Stop arbitrary arrests and detentions, and ensure due process of law and fair trials: According to the Tibet centre for Human Rights and Democracy, up to 6,500 people were arbitrarily arrested and detained after the Tibetan Uprising last March, and 170 among them were sentenced without due process of law. The number of people arrested in Xinjiang Autonomous Region has amounted to approximately 1,500 people. China should stop arresting and detaining Uyghurs arbitrarily and any cases suspected should be tried openly under the monitor of international community.
International community should understand the Xingiang incident under the context of series of human rights violation in China, including the Tibetan Uprising in March 2008, the Charter 08 at the end of 2008, and the recent official arrest of dissident Liu Xiao Bo under the crime of “incitement to subvert state power” after his six-month secret detention. China has long controlled the Xinjiang Autonomous Region with tense oppression, including constraining its religious freedom by prohibiting assemblies during the Ramadan and linking the Uyghur independence movement to terrorism.
International community should not compromise on severe human rights violation in China because for China being a rising economic power. We present this statement as the collective voice of Taiwanese civil society and assert that concerns for human rights should be universal and unconditional. Therefore we also call on international community to remain monitoring and brining pressure to China on the following development of this incident.
Undersigned by:
Taiwan Association for Human Rights (TAHR), Taiwan Alliance to End Death Penalty (TAEDP), Taiwan Free Burma Network (TFBN), Judicial Reform Foundation, The Human Rights Committee of Taipei Bar Association, Chen Wen Chen Memorial Foundation, Humanistic Education Foundation, Association of Taiwan Journalists, Friends of Tibet in Taiwan, Deng Liberty Foundation, Amnesty International Taiwan, Taiwan Labor Front, Taiwan Green Party, Peace Time Foundation of Taiwan Guts United Taiwan, Committee on society of The Presbyterian Church in Taiwan, UN for Taiwan Alliance, Regional Tibetan Youth Congress in Taiwan, Taiwan Association of University Professors, Taiwan Society North
