Participants in a forum outside the national legislature in Taipei City during the ‘Sunflower’ occupation in April, 2014, call for the principles of distributional justice and direct democracy to be inserted into Taiwan’s constitution. Credit: Dennis Engbarth/IPS

By Dennis Engbarth
TAIPEI, Feb 5 2015 (IPS)

“The clock is ticking.” Those were the words of Taiwan Democracy Watch Director Yeh Chueh-an on Feb. 4, as scores of civil society organisations in the capital, Taipei, began a countdown for a citizen-based rewriting of Taiwan’s constitution aimed at safeguarding human rights and social equity.

Composed of over 20 human rights and social activist organisations, the Alliance for the Promotion of a Citizen Constitutional Council has launched a campaign for an overhaul of Taiwan’s political framework that, for the first time, could feature the “bottom–up” participation of the country’s 23 million citizens.

“Citizens, not political elites, must be the subjects of constitutional reform." -- National University Professor of Political Science Chen Chun-hung
The digital clock was set at 116 days and 12 hours – meaning a deadline of May 31, marking the end of the current session of Taiwan’s parliament, the Legislative Yuan.

Proposed constitutional amendments must first be approved by three fourths of Taiwan’s 112-seat national legislature and announced six months in advance of a national referendum in which at least half of Taiwan’s over 18 million eligible voters must vote “yes” if the changes are to be ratified.

Draft amendments to the constitution – including one prepared by opposition legislator Cheng Li-chun  – are likely to include safeguards on human dignity, freedom of residence, assistance for the destitute, better working conditions, and confidential communications and privacy.

On Jan. 12, the Alliance to Promote a Citizen Constitutional Council proposed a two-stage process in which a ‘national affairs conference’ would bring political parties, legislators, civil society organisations and other civic leaders together to brainstorm how best to bring about grassroots-based constitutional changes.

“Citizens, not political elites, must be the subjects of constitutional reform,” said National University Professor of Political Science Chen Chun-hung.

“We must set in place robust procedures for ordinary people to participate and feel a close connection and involvement in this process if it is to succeed,” added Chen, also a director of Taiwan Democracy Watch.

Breaking China’s historic hold

The current constitution of the ‘Republic of China’ (Taiwan’s official name) was drafted in mainland China, and imposed on Taiwan by the Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang or KMT) government of the late autocrat Chiang Kai-shek after the KMT lost the Chinese civil war in the late 1940s.

Its modest provisions for democratic and citizen rights were deep-frozen during four decades of martial law rule through the late 1980s.

Seven sets of revisions through “additional articles” spurred by Taiwan’s first native-born president Lee Teng-hui in the 1990s left Taiwan with a democratically elected but unwieldy political system in which power and responsibility are not commensurate.

Although directly elected, the president has no direct role in state administration; the premier or head of government is appointed by the president and is not responsible to the national legislature; and no feasible methods exist to resolve deadlocks between the executive and legislative branches.

“We have a system in which the president can do what he wants with impunity and there is no way that the people or even the legislature can stop him no matter how low his support is or how unpopular his policies [are],” said Economic Democracy Union convenor Lai Chung-chiang.

“The existing governmental system is unable to solve the pressing and urgent problems faced by the people, including issues impinging on their right of survival [such as] lax food safety, wealth inequality, threats to their right of residence and inadequate social welfare,” added Taiwan Labour Front Secretary-General Sun Yu-lien.

Once considered impossible due to opposition by President Ma Ying-jeou and his hard-line KMT government, the question of constitutional re-engineering was re-energised during the past year of social and political activism, punctuated by the Mar. 18-Apr. 10 ‘Sunflower Movement’ occupation of Taiwan’s national legislature.

The occupation was touched off by Ma’s insistence on ramming through the legislature a bill to ratify a controversial Cross-Strait Trade in Services Agreement with China despite widespread concerns that the covertly negotiated pact would harm local industries and employment, exacerbate wealth inequalities and undermine democratic freedoms.

The campaign, which included a mass rally of over 300,000 on Mar. 30, stymied the pact’s ratification and was followed by street demonstrations in late April 2014 that scuttled plans to complete a bitterly contested 10- billion-dollar nuclear power plant.

During the occupation, activists called for a Citizen Constitutional Council and held democratic deliberations among several thousand citizens on its agenda.

But it was not until the ruling KMT suffered a severe electoral defeat in nationwide mayoral elections this past November that the feasibility of constitutional change emerged on the immediate political agenda.

The opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) won 13 mayoral posts, compared to six for the ruling KMT and three for independent candidates, including prominent surgeon Ko Wen-je, who won the nation’s capital of Taipei City.

A survey of 1,069 Taiwanese adults released last December by Taiwan Thinktank showed that nearly 60 percent of those polled saw the mayoral elections as a vote of no confidence in the Ma government and its pro-China and pro-conglomerate policies.

The debacle triggered Ma’s resignation from the KMT chairmanship on Dec. 3. Although Ma remains president, the moderate New Taipei City Mayor Chu Li-lun replaced him as ruling party leader on Jan. 19 and called for constitutional amendments to move Taiwan toward a cabinet system of government.

A research fellow at the Academia Sinica Institute of Jurisprudence, Huang Kuo-chang, told IPS that the March occupation exposed to the Taiwan people the grave dysfunction of the political system, adding, “The Nov. 29 elections have finally forced the KMT to consider the necessity of constitutional reform.”

Securing basic rights

In December, the KMT and DPP legislative caucuses formed task forces on constitutional revision, but the two parties remain mainly concerned with revamping the central government structure and the legislative election system.

However, the top priority for social activist and human rights organisations is securing the equivalent of a constitutional Bill of Rights.

As National Taiwan University Professor of Law Chen Chao-ju noted, “[C]onstitutions in other new democracies, such as South Africa, have special provisions to ensure substantive equality and social justice.

“We need to incorporate detailed provisions to protect basic human and social rights from discrimination or infringement by the state and substantive abrogation by government-business collusion,” she added.

Such changes could help people uphold and defend, among other things, their own labour rights, in a country that is consistently failing to provide equally for all its citizens.

Although the unemployment rate fell slightly in 2014 to 3.96 percent, the lowest since the KMT returned to power, joblessness among youth (15-24 years of age) averaged 12.63 percent that same year.

Taiwan’s unemployment rate was higher than Japan’s (3.5 percent), South Korea (3.4 percent) and Hong Kong (3.3 percent).

Meanwhile, according to the official Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics, the share of labour compensation to gross domestic product (GDP) fell by 0.87 percentage points to 44.65 percent in 2013, the second lowest in Taiwan’s history. During the same period, the ratio of enterprise profits to GDP rose by 1.41 percentage points to 33.45 percent.

“The fruits of economic growth have been taken by conglomerates and major stockholders while wages have stagnated and the numbers of working poor have continued to rise,” summed up Taiwan Labour Front Secretary-General Sun You-lien.

All across the spectrum, ordinary citizens and experts on social, economic and political policy are counting down the days for constitutional reform that could usher in an era of democracy and development that many here had started to believe was unattainable.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

A worker, farmer and doctor are hanged in the “Suicide Zone” outside of Taiwan’s national legislature, in a street theater protest by student groups against government efforts to establish “Free Economy Pilot Zones” across Taiwan. Credit: Dennis Engbarth/IPS

By Dennis Engbarth
TAIPEI, Sep 11 2014 (IPS)

The Taiwan government’s plan to liberalise tariff-free imports of agricultural produce from China and other countries for processing in free economic pilot zones, which will then be exported as ‘Made in Taiwan’ items, may mean suicide for Taiwanese farmers if approved by the national legislature.

The Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang or KMT) government of President Ma Ying-jeou conceived the Free Economic Pilot Zone (FEPZ) plan in 2012 as a way to urge Taiwanese investors in China to relocate value added operations back to Taiwan, through tax and other incentives.

In early 2013, the KMT government re-packaged the plan to feature components for the promotion of value-added agriculture and international medical services, among others, and submitted required changes in the legal code to implement the plan in a draft Free Economic Pilot Zone Special Act to the KMT-controlled Legislature in December 2013.

“The intention of the Ma government to lift the ban on Chinese agricultural commodities through the FEPZ special act violates his own promise in the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections, but dovetails with Beijing’s objective of cross-strait economic integration." -- Lai Chung-chiang, convenor of the Democratic Front Against Cross-Strait Trade in Services Agreement
The special act offers investors in FEPZs business tax exemptions, tariff-free importation of industrial or agricultural raw materials, eased entry and income tax breaks for foreign professional workers, including from China, and streamlined procedures for customs and quarantine checks, labour safety inspections and environmental impact assessments.

Social movement groups have warned that the China-friendly KMT government aims to use the FEPZ programme as a back door to realise full deregulation of trade between Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China, and avoid the need for legislative ratification of trade pacts after the Sunflower citizen and student occupation movement in March derailed a controversial service trade pact between the two governments.

Lai Chung-chiang, convenor of the Democratic Front Against Cross-Strait Trade in Services Agreement, observed that the Sunflower movement spurred the formation of a consensus in Taiwan that the Legislature should enact a law strictly governing the negotiation of cross-strait agreements before reviewing the ‘trade in services’ agreement or other pacts with China.

Fearing indefinite delays in future China trade deals, the Ma government tried to ram a first reading of the draft FEPZ special act through the national legislature’s economic affairs committee in two extraordinary sessions in July and August, but opposition lawmakers blocked this push.

Lai told IPS that the core of the FEPZ concept is to arbitrarily grant tariff-free entry for raw materials and products from all countries into Taiwan’s six main seaports and its major international airport in order to display Taiwan’s interest to enter the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and other regional free trade pacts.

Instead, this act will sell out Taiwan’s economic future, warned Lai, adding, “Our major trade partners will have no reason to engage in negotiations with us to further open their markets as our government will have surrendered all of our bargaining chips even before talks begin.”

“The intention of the Ma government to lift the ban on Chinese agricultural commodities through the FEPZ special act violates his own promise in the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections, but dovetails with Beijing’s objective of cross-strait economic integration,” Lai added.

Despite a high-powered advertising campaign, the Taiwan public is not visibly enthusiastic about the FEPZ plan. Nearly 63 percent of respondents in a poll carried out by the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)’s Public Survey Center in June said they were worried about the scheme’s impact on Taiwan’s economy.

Labour organisations are leery of further liberalisation of foreign workers, including white-collar professionals from China, while medical and educational organisations object to plans to offer health and educational tourism programmes that would spur the commodification of public services.

Raw deal for local farmers

Chen Chi-chung, a professor at the National Chung Hsing University Agricultural Policy Center, stated, “Taiwan may become the first producer of agricultural goods that will permit agricultural produce from all over the world, including China, to be used for processing in its own factories free of tariffs or business taxes.”

Article 42 of the draft special act would fully lift the current ban on import from China of 2,186 types of raw materials, including 830 types of agricultural commodities, while Article 38 would exempt FEPZ enterprises from tariffs, cargo levies and business income taxes. Article 41 would exempt most such commodities from customs or health inspections.

Moreover, makers of processed agricultural goods or foods exported from FEPZs will be able to attach ‘Made in Taiwan’ labels to their products.

Rural Life Experimental Farm Director Liao Chih-heng told IPS that instead of helping farmers cope with the unfair competition from producers in China due to state subsidies and lower labour and environmental costs, the Ma government is inviting such unfair competition into our home market.

Tai Chen-yao, a farmer of squash and lemons in Kaohsiung City in southern Taiwan, told IPS, “If Taiwan sells processed Chinese agricultural goods as Made in Taiwan, food processors as well as farmers will be hurt since there will be no way to guarantee the safety or quality of raw material and thus the food safety for consumers of such products.”

Su Chih-fen, Yunlin County Mayor for the opposition DPP, echoed these sentiments, telling IPS that a rising share of Taiwan farmers, including youth who are returning to the countryside, are absorbing new knowledge and creating innovative agricultural products that can out-compete imports, which may be cheaper but have higher food safety risks.

The value-added agriculture plan would deprive this emerging cohort of new style farmers of access to export markets and divert resources away from assisting the majority of farmers to upgrade, said Su, who is mayor of Taiwan’s agricultural capital.

Agriculture accounted for 1.7 percent of Taiwan’s gross domestic product (GDP) in 2013. Primary sector workers in agriculture, forestry, fishing and livestock accounted for nearly five percent of Taiwan’s 10.97-million-strong workforce or 544,000 persons as of May 2014.

Su further warned that the government’s plan would effectively punish farmers who kept their roots in Taiwan and have worked to upgrade and grow high quality produce.

In the wake of such widespread criticism, the official National Development Commission (NDC) has announced modifications including dropping the provision that 10 percent of agriculture value-added goods made with raw materials from China could be sold on the domestic market.

However, Chen Chi-chung declared that the changes, along with the NDC’s claim that processed foods made in the FEPZ using imported materials from China or other low-cost suppliers would not enter or affect Taiwan’s domestic market, were deceptive semantics.

Using imported raw agriculture materials, such as tea or peanuts, to make processed food products in Taiwan will surely reduce the demand for domestic agricultural products and thus the income of Taiwan farmers, said Chen.

According to the Council of Agriculture’s statistics, average annual income for a farm household in 2012 was about 33,200 dollars; however, the net income from farming activities was only 7,200 dollars.

KMT Legislative Caucus Convenor Fei Hung-tai told IPS that the majority KMT caucus aims to actively promote passage of the FEPZ statute during the upcoming session.

Noting that civil society organisations and opposition parties have called for the elimination of Articles 38, 41, 42 and other provisions harmful to the interests of Taiwan farmers, workers and public services, Lai told IPS, “If the KMT pushes passage of this act, it will have to either have to accept major concessions in the final content of the bill or face an intense backlash in civil society and public opinion.”

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Taiwanese women hold aloft a LGBT flag during Taiwan`s 11th annual LGBT Pride March in Taipei City Oct. 26, 2013. Credit: Dennis Engbarth/IPS

By Dennis Engbarth
TAIPEI, Jul 2 2014 (IPS)

Prominent international human rights experts are calling on the Taiwan government to quickly enact a comprehensive anti-discrimination act, revamp the law on citizenship and take a wide range of other actions to curb gender discrimination.

A five-member commission issued 35 recommendations after an intense review of Taiwan’s second national report on the implementation of the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).

The commission members from Kenya, Malaysia the Philippines, South Korea and the United States met at the Civil Service Training Center in Taipei City June 23-26.

"It is...commendable, that a country which is not a UN member state has voluntarily undertaken to adopt the standards of CEDAW..." -- Mary Shanthi Dairiam, United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Gender Equality Taskforce
More than 230 government officials and some 100 representatives of non-governmental organizations joined in the review. The event consisted of discussions with the 55 civil society organizations, as well as a day-long questioning session with Taiwan government officials on issues raised by NGOs in nearly 30 “parallel reports.”

Zoe Ye of the Intersex, Transgender and Transsexual People Care Association, reminded the committee of the case of Tsai Ya-ting, a trans-woman whose application for a national identity card was rejected in 2002. She committed suicide the following year.

“The government has not learned from this lesson and has ignored the urgent desire of transgender persons to adopt a legal gender status in accord with their self-identity,” according to Ye.

The Taiwan government currently requires applicants for gender change to undergo psychological examinations and the surgical removal of reproductive organs before changes in official registration are approved, a requirement which Ye stressed violates five UN human rights conventions, including CEDAW.

Other NGO representatives stressed infringements on women’s land rights, faulting the government for failure to conduct gender impact-assessments for many of its development plans that involve large-scale land expropriations.

These “threaten the right to adequate housing for rural women and all aspects of their lives,” said Lu Shih-wei of Taiwan Rural Front and Wild at Heart Legal Defence Association.

Non-member committed to CEDAW

Taiwan ratified CEDAW in 2007 under the previous centrist Democratic Progressive Party government of then president Chen Shui-bian, but the United Nations Secretariat rejected the ratified treaty for deposit since Taiwan is not a UN member state.

Instead, CEDAW was directly incorporated into Taiwan’s domestic law through an “enforcement act” effective January 1, 2012.

“It is almost unique, and commendable, that a country which is not a UN member state has voluntarily undertaken to adopt the standards of CEDAW and other human rights treaties,” Mary Shanthi Dairiam, a member of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Gender Equality Taskforce, told IPS.

Still, “the defensiveness of government officials here is the same as elsewhere,” according to Shanthi, who is a former member of the UN Committee on the Elimination of all Forms Discrimination against Women (CEFDW).

Speaking to IPS, Democratic Progressive Party legislator Yu Mei-nu said that  the realization of CEDAW objectives may be hampered by “martial law mentalities” of certain government officials. But the convention has “provided a platform for citizens and civil society organizations to link with international society and fight for human rights at home,” according to Yu.

Main recommendations 

Chief among the 35 recommendations were calls to set a deadline to enact “comprehensive legislation covering all fields of gender discrimination” as soon as possible; establish an independent national human rights institution; prompt revision of laws on nationality, domestic violence, human trafficking and marriage equality; and passage of long-denied bills to protect domestic workers, along with ratification of the International Convention on the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families.

The committee further stressed the need for “gender impact assessments” for government policies and development plans.

It called for abolishing the surgical requirement for trans women, as well as the mandatory HIV testing requirement for entry, stay and residence of women living with HIV/AIDS.

The panel was led by Shin Heisoo, representative of the Korea Center for UN Human Rights Policy and a member of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Shin previously participated in the review of CEDAW state reports from 2001 to 2008.

“I hope the government of Taiwan is contemplating how to implement these recommendations…” Shin concluded, “Especially since we have heard that there has been a deterioration of civil and political and economic human rights.”

UNDP’s Shanti echoed the need for action. “The government officials said they have revised over 33,000 laws and regulations. But what the world community wants to know is not what the state says it is doing, but what is actually being achieved in terms of real improvement in gender equality.”

Members of Taiwan’s Judicial Reform Foundation at a protest in Taipei against surveillance of citizens. Credit: Dennis Engbarth/IPS.

By Dennis Engbarth
TAIPEI, Mar 3 2014 (IPS)

Taiwan’s national legislature has taken a small but important step to curb rampant government surveillance of citizens and politicians through revisions of the Communication Security and Surveillance Act and the criminal code.

The changes were sparked by a political furore last September involving wiretaps against the speaker of the national legislature and other leading lawmakers by a secretive Special Investigation Unit (SIU) under Supreme Public Prosecutor Huang Shih-ming.“These figures show that either Taiwan is a paradise for criminals or that there is gross abuse of wiretapping."

At a high profile news conference Sep. 6, Huang had waved transcripts of wiretaps said to show that legislative speaker Wang Jin-pyng had pressured justice ministry officials not to appeal a court judgement on opposition Democratic Progressive Party legislative caucus convenor Ker Chien-ming.

The supreme public prosecutor declared that the wiretaps had discovered “the greatest influence peddling scandal in history,” even though prosecutors failed to indict any lawmaker.

President Ma Ying-jeou, who is also chairman of the ruling Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang or KMT), attempted to use the flap to force Wang out of the ruling party and out of office.

However, courts granted Wang an injunction against his expulsion from the KMT and he still retains his office.

In the meantime, revelations that the SIU had tapped the legislature’s mobile phone switchboard triggered a parliamentary furore. Opposition DPP lawmakers charged that Ma was restoring the four-decade long “secret police rule” from 1949 through to the early 1990s. KMT legislator Lu Hsueh-chi said the taps were “tantamount to political spying.”

An investigative report released Jan. 15 by the Control Yuan, the ombudsman branch of Taiwan’s government, confirmed that the supreme public prosecutor had abused his powers in ordering the SIU to carry out “multiple investigations in one case”, or “fishing”, and unauthorised surveillance on lawmakers.

“The September storm triggered a backlash over the virtually uncontrolled criminal surveillance by the prosecutors, investigators and police,” Judicial Reform Foundation board member Kao Yung-cheng told IPS.

Citing Ministry of Justice figures, Kao said that prosecutors had applied for an annual average of 15,312 wiretaps between 2008-2012, 74 percent of which were approved by courts. Comparatively, wiretapping requests over the period averaged 2,720 cases annually in the United States, which has a population 11 times that of Taiwan.

“These figures show that either Taiwan is a paradise for criminals or that there is gross abuse of wiretapping and disproportionate invasions of privacy by judicial and law enforcement agencies,” said Kao.

Opposition attempts to force Huang’s resignation and disband the SIU ultimately failed, but cooperation between opposition lawmakers and KMT legislators associated with Wang, and intense pressure from legal reform and human rights organisations led to passage Jan. 15 of revisions to the Communication Security and Surveillance Act (CSSA) to restrict the use of wiretaps.

President Ma, whose disapproval rating soared to over 75 percent in the wake of the scandal, promulgated the revisions Jan. 29.

“The most important change is the requirement that prosecutors must submit separate applications for warrants for approval by courts for each person to be wiretapped instead of giving prosecutors a virtual blank cheque,” DPP legislator Yu Mei-nu, a long-time human rights and feminist lawyer told IPS.

“This change should curb unrestricted use of wiretaps to ‘fish’ for offences unrelated to the initial warrant, and help prevent the use of wiretaps for political surveillance.”

The revisions also require judges to reject applications by prosecutors for wiretaps that are not in keeping with legal procedures, lack sufficient reason and are unclear or insufficient in their explanation.

Moreover, prosecutors will not be permitted to review communication records of persons suspected of offences that carry minimum sentences of less than three years.

Approval by a judge will be required for all such applications except for some serious felonies with minimum sentences of at least 10 years, such as kidnapping, human trafficking, fraud or intimidation.

Moreover, courts will now be required to officially notify the person who is wiretapped within 14 days after the conclusion of the surveillance.

A revamped act also establishes a legal channel for appeal by victims of illegal wiretapping.

The Ministry of Justice will also be required to publicly issue an annual report of wiretapping, and report relevant data to the legislature.

Judges or prosecutors who violate the rules could face legal review or discipline, while civil service officials or employees who misuse material from wiretaps could face sentences of up to three years.

However, the reform push failed to achieve two major objectives set by human rights groups.

“The best way to prevent excessive tapping and interference with privacy is to have officers listen on site in real time and not just record and store everything for prosecutors to listen to at their leisure, but this proposal did not pass,” Kao said.

Also rejected were proposals to disband two centralised surveillance centres operated by the Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau and the National Police Administration.

“These amendments do constitute a small positive step, but even bigger steps are needed to really curb wiretapping abuse,” the DPP’s Yu Mei-nu told IPS.

Chang Sen-wen, owner of a pharmacy in Dapu township demolished by Miaoli county government, speaking to protesters in August last year. His body was found under a bridge near his home a month later. Credit: Dennis Engbarth/IPS.

By Dennis Engbarth
TAIPEI, Jan 20 2014 (IPS)

The Taiwan farmers victory in a landmark court case in a years-long battle has delivered a shock to government officials and given a morale boost to citizen campaigns.

The win followed a bitter resistance campaign against expropriation of farmland that has already cost two lives.

The verdict will encourage a drive by civic groups and opposition lawmakers to revamp the controversial Land Expropriation Act.The verdict will encourage a drive by civic groups and opposition lawmakers to revamp the controversial Land Expropriation Act.

The dispute in Dapu in Miaoli county has been the most high-profile case in Taiwan of resistance to ‘zone expropriations’ in which large zones are subject to compulsory sale to government for projects which use part of the land for infrastructure and sell other portions to raise funds for construction or local government finance.

At present, there are 95 cases pending of zone expropriations involving over 7,600 hectares. Resistance campaigns are taking place over the planned expropriation of 3,000 hectares for an ‘aviation city’ near the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, for 447 hectares of designated farmland for a ‘knowledge-based industrial park’ in Hsinchu county, and for 236 hectares for a station on a mass rapid transit line between the airport and Taipei City.

“Many large-scale zone expropriations of excellent farmland have taken place all over Taiwan usually under the pretext of creating new towns or industrial zones without consideration of actual need, and the land is often sold for speculation,” said Taiwan Rural Front (TRF) chairman Hsu Shih-jung.

“The result is the rapid erosion of Taiwan’s best farmland,” said Hsu, adding that the verdict “exposed the ills of the zone expropriation system and is a benchmark for land justice.”

In 1999, Miaoli county government mayor Liu Cheng-hung ordered the zone expropriation of 156 hectares, mostly high quality rice fields, to expand a nearby technology park, even though the proposed optics factory there needed only 28 hectares. The expropriations proceeded despite cancellation of the optics project.

The case in Dapu made international news in June 2010 after a Taiwan citizen reporter filmed Miaoli county government excavators, protected by hundreds of police, destroying hectares of green rice paddies ready for harvesting.

Public revulsion over the destruction of the rice fields and the subsequent suicide of grandmother Chu Feng-min fuelled a protest campaign to ‘Return our Land’. The protest was led by the Dapu Self-Salvation Association and the TRF.

Despite negotiations with the central government and the legal proceedings, Miaoli county excavators, protected by hundreds of police, tore down the homes of the last four resisting households, including the pharmacy of Mr Chang Sen-wen, on Jul. 18 last year.

The TRF responded with a protest sit-in joined by more than 10,000 citizens. A month later Chang Sen-wen was found dead under a bridge near his home in an apparent suicide.

On Jan. 3, a panel of three Taichung High Administrative Court judges found that the compulsory purchase of land belonging to Ms Peng Hsiu-chun, Chang’s widow, and eight other citizens in four households and the Jul. 18 demolitions were “illegal” and voided the expropriation order approved by the Ministry of the Interior (MOI).

Lawyer Chan Shun-kuei, who represented the Dapu residents, told IPS that the MOI and the Miaoli county government were unlikely to win a reversal from the Taiwan Supreme Administrative Court.

“The MOI’s commissions on land expropriation and urban development and the Miaoli county government were unable to provide documentary evidence that there had been substantive discussion about the alternatives to expropriation or whether the expropriation was necessary for the public interest,” Chan said.

At a news conference held at the National Taiwan University Alumni Club in Taipei City shortly after the judgment, the TRF’s Hsu Shu-jung said the verdict “came too late to save grandmother Chu Feng-min and Chang Sen-wen.”

“We want our land and homes to be returned to us and for Liu Cheng-hung to apologise and explain why he forced my husband to die,” declared Peng Hsiu-chun, who added that she would apply for redress through the National Compensation Act.

Hsu told IPS that the late Chang Sen-wen had asked him, “What crime did I commit that the government is treating me in this way? What gives the government the right to decide whether I live or die?”

Citizen Congress Watch Board member and former convenor Ku Chung-hwa told IPS that “the controversies over Dapu and several other expropriations and the callous attitude of executive agencies have led judges to gradually finally realise the necessity to stress environmental rights.

“Civil society has won a battle and the government will need to pay at least some heed to the requirement for substantive and transparent hearings and may find it difficult to stonewall revision of the Land Expropriation Act,” Ku said.

Besides prohibiting further use of zone expropriations, draft revisions to the Land Expropriation Act submitted by opposition Democratic Progressive Party legislators on behalf of TRF and other civic organisations would mandate that the purpose of the law is to “protect the people’s right of survival and property rights,” mandate substantive assurance of public interest and necessity, and democratic and transparent public review.

Professor of land economics Tai Hsiu-hsiung of Taipei’s National Chengchi University told IPS that Taiwan’s excessively low tax rates had pushed local governments to use this method to first finance public infrastructure and then use zone expropriations get land for sale to improve their overall fiscal balance sheets.

Two marchers in Taiwan`s 11th annual LGBT Pride March in Taipei City Oct. 26 affirm that ``I am proud to be gay; I`m not a sex refugee!`` Credit: Dennis Engbarth/IP

By Dennis Engbarth
TAIPEI, Oct 30 2013 (IPS)

Taiwan could become the first Asian state to legalise same-sex and other “pluralistic“ forms of marriage if a wide-ranging package of changes to the civil code are approved by the national legislature.

On Oct. 25, Taiwan`s 112-member legislature referred a “marriage equality“ bill of revisions to the Civil Code introduced by 23 lawmakers of the main opposition Democratic Progressive Party to the Judicial Affairs Committee for review and possible first reading.

Taiwan offers one of Asia`s most progressive environments for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights as both male and female same-sex activity are legal. But same-sex couples are deprived of legal protections encoded in the Civil Code for traditional male-female married households.

Some same-sex couples have filed appeals in administrative courts to overturn the rejection of their applications for marriage registration. But Taiwan Alliance to Promote Civil Partnership Rights (TAPCPR) president Hsu Hsiu-wen told IPS that such legal actions “can only provide remedy for individual couples.

“What we need are lasting changes in the Civil Code to legalise same-sex marriages and civil partnerships in general,“ she said.

The current push follows two previous efforts by DPP lawmakers in 2003 and 2006 to introduce same-sex marriage bills that were blocked from the legislative agenda by the right-wing Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang or KMT) majority.

During an Oct. 25 news conference at the legislature, DPP legislator Yu Mei-nu said the bill reflected both the guarantees of Taiwan`s constitution for equal rights for all citizens and the stipulations of the International Covenant on Civic and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which became part of Taiwan law in December 2009.

Yu noted that 10 international human rights experts who reviewed Taiwan`s first state report on implementation of the covenants in February had described as “discriminatory“ the fact that “only heterosexual marriages are recognised but not same-sex marriages or cohabiting partnerships“ and recommended that “the Civil Code be amended to give legal recognition to the diversity of families in the country.”

The package involves changes to 82 articles of the Civil Code section on marriage and the family, most of which involve changing phrases such as “husband and wife“ to “spouse“ or “father and mother“ to “parents.“

She said the apparently semantic changes were “substantial“ because the wording “adopts a neutral method to express the key conditions of marriage and married spouses and relations between parents and children and affirm the same-sex marriage and marriage rights for persons with diverse sexual preferences.“

The draft bill also includes complementary revisions to articles regarding adoption and inheritance that would equalise rights among spouses and ban courts from basing custody decisions on gender, sexual preference, sexual identity or gender characteristics.

In the future, Yu said that lawmakers would introduce bills on “civil partnerships“ and “family systems,“ a set of draft rules which would aim to democratise family institutions.

DPP legislator Cheng Li-chun said “the government has an obligation to fulfill the constitutional and human rights of all people and not make such fulfilment contingent on public opinion.

“There is no reason why our citizens should be deprived of the right to marry their loved one simply because their loved one has the same sex or because of different sexual preferences,“ said Cheng.

Nevertheless, prospects for early passage are clouded. There appears to be little enthusiasm in the ruling KMT for the proposed “marriage equalisation“ revisions to the Civil Code.

KMT legislative caucus deputy secretary-general Chiang Hui-chen told IPS that “this bill will pass when the time is ripe.“ She added that “the reaction I received when I asked constituents was why are we spending time on an issue like that when there is a crisis on food safety?“

Nevertheless, opposition, especially from religious groups, remains strong. A petition issued by the Taiwan Family Alliance and claiming to have over 310,000 signatures called on citizens to “support the marriage values of `one man, one woman` and `one husband, one wife“` and to “oppose the bills for `same-sex marriage` and `pluralist families’,“ maintaining that the traditional pattern was the “foundation of family ethics and moral values.“

Yu acknowledged in an interview that “there will be a long road before this bill can be approved,“ but said the decision of the full legislature to refer the bill to committee “shows significant progress“ compared to the fate of the previous attempts, which failed to enter the legislative process.

Moreover, TAPCPR`s Hsu said a poll of 567 Taiwan adults conducted by the United Daily News Survey Centre in June showed that support for same-sex marriage had risen from 25 percent in 2003 to 53 percent, while opposition fell from 55 percent to 37 percent and the ranks of “undecided“ shrank from 20 percent to 10 percent.

Hsu said opponents who believed that the reforms would “destroy the family and the institution of marriage“ were mistaken and that the passage of the revisions would “help us prevent many meaningless tragedies.“

“Our goal is to institute a marriage or partnership system in which persons of any gender or sexual preference can register and live together with appropriate legal guarantees and obligations and human rights,“ Hsu said.

“We have found in our discussions all over Taiwan that people can accept diversity through discussion and dialogue,“ she added.

“We hope that the draft revisions can be approved into law, but I also believe that their value lies in our hope that this process can open room for democratic discussion and dialogue in our society about diversity in marriage and gender roles,“ Hsu told IPS.

The draft bill was accepted by Taiwan`s legislature for review the day before the country’s 11th annual colourful LGBT Pride demonstration, which attracted over 50,000 supporters from Taiwan as well as Japan, South Korea and other countries under the themes of “make LGBT visible“ and “struggle together.“

“We want to show support for those who are still suffering or being discriminated against because of their sexual preferences and expressions,“ stated spokesman Albert Yang.

A broad coalition of Taiwanese labour, human rights and other civil society organisations are campaigning to block legislative ratification of the controversial Cross-Strait Services Trade Agreement signed Jun. 21 by representatives of Taiwan and China.

The signing of the pact in Beijing, a continuation of the Cross-Strait Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) signed in June 2010, sparked a two-day occupation of the legislative podium by opposition Democratic Progressive Party and Taiwan Solidarity Union lawmakers.

The boycott ended only after all legislative caucuses agreed that the agreement would be reviewed line by line instead of being rammed through a ratification vote, as desired by the rightist Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang or KMT) government.“But we are more concerned with the likelihood that China’s state enterprises will use their capital to buy up neighbourhood beauty parlours and hair dressing salons...” -- Cosmetology and Hair Vocational Association chairman Peter Ku Wen-fa

President and ruling KMT Chairman Ma Ying-jeou and other officials maintain that the new deal is in Taiwan’s favour since it would open 80 service product lines for Taiwan companies in China compared to 64 service industries in Taiwan listed for market liberalisation for investors and service providers from the Peoples Republic of China.

A post-signing impact study by the Chung-Hua Institution of Economic Research commissioned by the Ministry of Economic Affairs released Jul. 16 forecast that the pact would lift economic growth by between 0.025-0.034 percentage points and provide over 11,000 new service sector jobs over the next decade.

Among the sectors to be opened up to Chinese investment and experts are financial services, hotels and restaurants, printing, consumer services such hairdressing and beauty parlours, wholesale commerce, transportation services, construction, telecommunications and many social services including care services for handicapped and elderly citizens.

However, a wide range of economists, labour and human rights organisations, small entrepreneurs and cultural figures together with opposition parties warn that the new pact will harm the interests of Taiwan workers and small businesses and to democratic freedoms out of proportion to its anticipated benefits.

During a rally in front of the Legislative Yuan Jul. 28, Cross-Strait Agreement Watch Alliance Convenor Lai Chung-chiang announced the official formation of the Democratic Front against the Black-Box Cross-Strait Services Trade Agreement composed of a coalition of labour, human rights, environmental, social welfare and media reform organisations.

Critics have concentrated their fire on the lack of transparency in the negotiations, the asymmetrical liberalisations to China’s benefit and the impact on Taiwan society, culture and national security of deeper links with China’s party-state dominated economy.

The government did not conduct any comprehensive impact assessment or hold any substantive dialogue with industry associations, labour unions or legislators before signing this pact, Taiwan Labour Front secretary-general Sun Yu-lien told IPS.

National Taiwan University department of economics chairwoman Prof. Cheng Hsiu-lien told IPS that most of the market liberalisations offered by China have preconditions while most Taiwan’s market openings for Chinese companies are unconditional.

Cheng noted that Taiwan e-commerce ventures will not be allowed to directly offer cross-border services, but will have to set up joint ventures in China’s Fujian Province and apply for licences which would ban content contrary to Chinese policies, such as Beijing’s claim that Taiwan is part of Chinese territory.

Taiwanese e-commerce enterprises will be forced to take their capital, staff and knowhow to China and will also be forced to engage in self-censorship, warned Cheng.

Hong Yi Travel Services co-chairman Jack Tsai Chia-huang told IPS that the new pact would let Chinese companies set up a vertically integrated system of travel agencies, hotels, transportation, restaurants and retail stores that would monopolise the cash flow from Chinese tourism and let the Taiwan people bear the costs to the environment.

Cosmetology and Hair Vocational Association chairman Peter Ku Wen-fa told IPS that officials affirm that Chinese workers will not be imported and so they will have to worry about their jobs.

“But we are more concerned with the likelihood that China’s state enterprises will use their capital to buy up neighbourhood beauty parlours and hair dressing salons and our beauticians or hair stylists will become employees in Chinese state enterprises.”

Even businessmen eager to expand into the China market were dismayed.

Locus Publishing Company chairman Rex Hau Ming-yi said in a news conference Jul. 27 that government negotiators had failed to press Beijing to allow Taiwan publishers and printers access to book and magazine publishing licences, but agreed to permit Chinese state-owned publishing groups invest in Taiwan’s printing and wholesale market.

Taiwan publishers will be squeezed if Chinese state companies gain control over printing and wholesaling and will be subject to self-censorship, said Hou, who added that the result would be the erosion of freedom of thought and cultural diversity in our own civil society.

National Taiwan University professor of economics Lin Shang-kai told IPS that the new pact will spark another wave of migration of capital, talent and knowhow to China and thus further push down investment, employment, wages and consumption in our own economy.

A survey of 1,008 Taiwan adults released in late July by Taiwan Indicators Survey Research found that 48 percent opposed signing the services trade pact, while 34 percent were in favour. These figures reflect a reversal three years ago, when 47 percent supported signing an ECFA compared to 32 percent who opposed.

The impact of the backlash was shown when Taiwan’s 113-member national legislature began a two-week special session Jul. 29 during which the KMT had initially aimed to secure ratification of the pact.

Instead, while the civic alliance held protests against the pact outside the Legislative Yuan complex, party caucuses agreed to submit the pact to review by a legislative committee in September.

Taiwan Democratic Watch president Hsu Wei-chun told IPS that the delay shows that citizen pressure can have impact as many KMT lawmakers are aware that citizens on the streets and voters in their districts are very worried.

The just-completed review of Taiwan’s initial state human rights report offers a new model featuring direct involvement by civil society organisations in examining compliance with international rights covenants.

From Feb. 25 through Mar. 1 in Taipei City, a group of 10 independent international experts reviewed Taiwan’s initial human rights report under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) that Taiwan’s national legislature approved and President Ma Ying-jeou ratified in March 2009.

Since Taiwan has been excluded from the United Nations since October 1971, the ratified treaties could not be deposited with the UN Secretariat, but were directly incorporated into Taiwan domestic law through an ‘implementation act’ which took effect Dec. 10, 2009.

In line with the Implementation Act, the government of Taiwan’s ruling Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang or KMT) conducted a review of the legal code for compliance with the covenants and drafted the country’s first official state human rights report, which was published in April 2012.

Since Taiwan could not submit the report for review by the two UN human rights commissions responsible for monitoring implementation of the ICCPR and ICESCR, the official Presidential Human Rights Advisory Council (PHRAC) accepted a proposal of civil society organisations and invited 10 prominent international human rights experts to review the government’s State Report.

Manfred Nowak, professor of law and human rights at the University of Vienna and former UN special rapporteur on torture, led the review of the ICCPR. Eibe Riedel, chairman of the board of trustees of the German Institute for Human Rights and former vice-chair of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, headed the five-person subgroup for the ICESCR.

In the months leading up to the review, the PHRAC and the Ministry of Justice, which acted as secretariat for the review, translated into English the initial State Report and responses to “lists of issues” filed by the 10 international experts on the ICCPR and the ICESCR.

During the same period, Covenants Watch, a coalition of NGOs concerned with monitoring the treaties, drafted a ‘parallel report’ in May 2012, translated an updated parallel report into English in November 2012 and coordinated alternative replies to the list of issues by Taiwanese NGOs submitted to the experts Feb. 22.

After arriving in Taipei Feb. 24, the 10 experts held three days of discussions with government agencies, often represented at the vice-ministerial level, and met separately with NGOs in both formal and informal sessions before taking a day to write their conclusions Feb. 28. They issued their “conclusions and recommendations” at a news conference held at the Ministry of Justice Mar. 1.

Following the review, Nowak said the panel had been impressed by the detail of government responses and had been “deeply impressed” by the vitality of Taiwan’s civil society organisations.

Speaking at the Mar. 1 news conference, Nowak said it was “unique that a non-UN member has been willing to ratify and accept the two most important international human rights treaties, incorporate them into domestic law and accept review by independent international experts.”

Theo van Boven, honorary professor of international law at the University of Maastricht and former UN rapporteur on torture, who was one of the 10 experts, told IPS that “the aspect of the process in Taiwan of being able to face reality and meet many persons directly has an extra and worthwhile dimension and we wonder whether this can become a model for monitoring exercises in other countries.”

Speaking at a news conference held by NGOs Mar. 2, Covenants Watch convenor Kao Yung-cheng stated that “without the information provided by NGOs, the experts would have had difficulty finding out the realities of Taiwan’s human rights situation, and the review would have degenerated into a mere public relations exercise.”

Speaking at the same event, Huang Song-lih, professor of public health at Taipei’s National Yang Ming University and a member of a seven-person coordination committee under the PHRAC added that “one special aspect about this review is the fact that our voices have been heard by international experts during the past week more than we have been listened to by the government over the past five years.”

“UN reviews of such covenants are conducted in either Geneva or New York with a handful of government officials of the country under review and no formal sessions with NGOs, who have to engage in ‘guerrilla lobbying’ to be heard,” Danthong Breen, a human rights defender with Thailand’s Union for Civil Liberty (UCL) told IPS.

On Mar. 1, Nowak and Riedel announced more than 40 concrete recommendations, including calls for the Taiwan government to quickly set up “an independent national human rights commission,” ratify the other core UN human rights covenants, intensify training regarding the application of the covenants for judges, prosecutors, police and prison administrators, restore a moratorium on the implementation of death sentences, review the controversial Urban Renewal Act and stop forced evictions unless alternative housing is provided.”

The international experts noted that “as a result of the Implementation Act, the provisions of the two covenants are part of Taiwanese law and prevail over inconsistent domestic laws other than the Constitution.”

Amnesty International East Asia director Rosann Rife later told IPS that “the most important point confirmed by the government is that the position of the two covenants is higher than domestic law except only for the Constitution and therefore that when contradictions exist between domestic law and the covenants, the latter should take precedence.”

Saying that the most serious problem was Taiwan’s continued use of the death penalty, Nowak declared that the experts “strongly recommend that the government of Taiwan intensify efforts towards abolition of capital punishment and as a first and decisive step immediately introduce a moratorium on executions in accordance with the recommendations of the UN General Assembly.”

The experts also concluded that the provision of Article 6 (4) of the ICCPR that anyone sentenced to death has the right to seek pardon or commutation “seems to have been violated in all 15 cases of executions carried out in Taiwan during the past three years.”

By Ignacio Ramonet
PARIS, France, Jan 9 2013 (IPS)

Having survived the announced end of the world on Dec. 21, we can now try to foretell our immediate future, based on geopolitical principles that will help us understand the overall shifts of global powers and assess the major risks and dangers.

Ignacio Ramonet

Looking at a map of the world, we can immediately see some hotspots lit up in red. Four of them represent high levels of danger: Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and Asia.

In the European Union (EU), 2013 will be the worst year since the beginning of the crisis in 2008. Austerity is the only creed and deep cuts to the welfare state continue because Germany, which for the first time in history dominates Europe and is ruling it with an iron fist, wills it so.

In Spain, political tensions will rise as the Generalitat de Catalunya (Government of Catalonia) decides the terms of a local referendum on independence for this autonomous community (province), a process that will be watched with great interest by the separatists in Euskadi, the Basque Country.

As for the economy, already in dire straits, it all depends on what happens – in the Italian elections in February; and on how the markets react to a possible win by conservative candidate Mario Monti, who has the support of Berlin and the Vatican, or by centre-left candidate Pier Luigi Bersani, who is the frontrunner in the polls.

Social explosions could occur in any of the countries of southern Europe (Greece, Portugal, Italy or Spain), exasperated as their people are with the constant cutbacks. The EU will not emerge from the doldrums in 2013, and everything could get worse if, on top of it all, the response of the markets is brutal (as neoliberals are urging) in France under the very moderate socialist President François Hollande.

In Latin America, 2013 will also be a year of challenges. In the first place, in Venezuela, which since 1999 has been a driver of progressive changes throughout the region, the unforeseen relapse in the health of President Hugo Chávez – re-elected Oct. 7 – is creating uncertainty.

There will also be elections on Feb. 17 in Ecuador. President Rafael Correa, another key Latin American leader, is expected to be re-elected. On Nov. 10 important elections will be held in Honduras, where former president Manuel Zelaya was toppled on Jun. 28, 2009. The Electoral Tribunal has authorised the registration of the Partido Libertad y Refundación (LIBRE – Freedom and Refoundation Party), led by Zelaya.

Chileans are due to go to the polls on Nov. 17. The unpopularity of conservative President Sebastián Piñera opens the way for a possible victory by socialist candidate and former president Michelle Bachelet.

International attention will be focused on Cuba as talks continue in Havana between the Colombian government and the Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia (FARC) with the aim of putting an end to Latin America’s last armed conflict.

Meanwhile, there again appears to be a stalemate in the Middle East, the location of the most disturbing events in the world.

The Arab Spring uprisings toppled several dictators in the region: Zine Ben Ali in Tunisia, Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and Muammar Gaddafi in Libya.

But subsequent elections allowed reactionary Islamist parties, like the Muslim Brotherhood, to come to power. Now, as we are seeing in Egypt, they want to hold onto it at all costs, to the consternation of the secular segments of society who had been the first to rise up in protest, and are refusing to accept this new form of authoritarianism. Tunisia faces the same problem.

After following with interest the explosions of freedom in the spring of 2011, European societies have again become apathetic about what is going on in the Middle East.

For example, the inexorably deepening civil war in Syria clearly shows how the big Western powers (the United States, the United Kingdom and France), allies of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, have decided to support – with money, arms and instructors – the Sunni Islamist insurgents. On all fronts, they are gaining ground. How long can the government of President Bashar al-Assad last?

In the face of the “Shiite Front” (Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Syria and Iran), the United States has built a broad regional “Sunni Front” (from Turkey and Saudi Arabia to Morocco, including Egypt, Libya and Tunisia). Its goal: to overthrow Bashar al-Assad and deprive Teheran of its big regional ally by next spring.

Why? Because on Jun. 14 Iran will hold presidential elections, in which incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is not eligible to stand. In other words, for the next six months Iran will be immersed in a violent election campaign between partisans of a hard anti-Washington line and supporters of negotiations.

Given this situation in Iran, Israel will no doubt be preparing for a possible attack on Iran’s nuclear installations. The Jan. 22 elections in Israel will probably result in victory for the ultra-conservative coalition that supports Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is all for bombing Iran as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, U.S. President Barack Obama is looking toward Asia, a priority region for Washington since it decided on a strategic redirection of its foreign policy. The United States is attempting to curb the expansion of China by surrounding that country with military bases and relying on the support of its traditional partners: Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.

China’s seas have become the areas with the greatest potential for armed conflict in the Asia Pacific region. Tensions between Beijing and Tokyo caused by the sovereignty dispute over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands could be heightened following the Dec. 16 electoral victory of Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party, led by the new Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, who is a nationalist hawk.

China is moving full speed ahead with the modernisation of its navy. On Sept. 25 it launched its first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, with the intention of intimidating its neighbours. Beijing is increasingly intolerant of the U.S. military presence in Asia. A dangerous “strategic distrust” is building between the two giants, which will doubtless leave its mark on international politics in the 21st century.

(END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

Excerpt:

Covenants Watch Convenor Kao Yung-cheng speaks to reporters in Taipei City on Dec. 27, 2012. Protestors’ posters read “Illegal Murders Are Not Justice”. Credit: Dennis Engbarth/IPS

By Dennis Engbarth
TAIPEI, Jan 8 2013 (IPS)

Taiwanese activists and human rights advocates ushered in the New Year with a push to prevent a return to authoritarianism and defend procedural justice for death row prisoners in the wake of six executions just before Christmas.

Rights lawyers say they “do not exclude” filing criminal charges against Justice Minister Tseng Yung-fu in addition to filing a petition calling for his impeachment for “illegally” ordering the execution of six death row convicts who had been handed death sentences, confirmed by the Taiwan Supreme Court, for a total of eight murders.

The men were executed on Dec. 21 by pistol shots to the head and heart in three prisons across Taiwan, without prior notification to families or lawyers.

The incident brought the total number of persons executed by the current government to 19. President Ma Ying-jeou of the ruling Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang or KMT) broke a five-year moratorium on death penalty executions, begun by the previous Democratic Progressive Party administration, with four executions on Apr. 30, 2010.

A total of 55 convicts remain on death row.

The executions were the third set carried out since the Taiwan government ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) in March 2009 and incorporated the content of the two treaties into domestic law through an implementation act effective December 10, 2009 .

The European Union and international and domestic human rights groups denounced the executions.

European Commission Vice President Catherine Ashton deplored the executions and called on Taipei to take concrete steps toward reducing the use of capital punishment to allow the resumption of a de facto moratorium.

Amnesty International East Asia Director Roseann Rife termed the action cold-blooded killing by the Taiwan authorities.

The KMT government’s decision to carry out the executions overrode an appeal by a panel of prominent international human rights professionals slated to review Taiwan’s compliance with the two covenants in late February 2013.

Manfred Nowak, former United Nations special rapporteur on torture, and Eibe Riedel, joint expert committee member of the U.N. Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, issued a joint letter on Nov. 21 last year calling on Ma to refrain from carrying out any more executions before the February review.

According to Tseng, the ministry of justice (MOJ) had no choice but to carry out the executions after the prime suspect in a child murder sparked public outrage by claiming he knew he would not be executed and could enjoy a life in prison.

Tseng also declared that the MOJ has never promised to terminate the death penalty.

Shortly after the incident, a coalition of Taiwan human rights organisations submitted an impeachment motion against Tseng to the Control Yuan, the branch of government responsible for monitoring malfeasance by government officials.

The petition, filed in person with Control Yuan Commissioner Yeh Yao-peng by Covenants Watch convenor Kao Yung-cheng, charged that Tseng’s signature on the execution orders on Dec. 20 violated Article 6-4 of the ICCPR, which has been ratified by this country and given effect in domestic law by the Implementation Act.

The petition added that the ICCPR article mandates that “anyone sentenced to death shall have the right to seek pardon or commutation of the sentence”.

Kao related that the Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty (TAEDP) had helped 44 death row convicts, including the six executed December 21, to submit formal petitions for amnesty, pardon or commutation of sentence to President Ma on Mar. 29, 2010.

The president gave no indication that he approved or rejected the petitions, Kao told IPS.

In its Dec. 21 statement, the MOJ said the executions had been carried out in accordance with existing law, including the Amnesty Act, which does not specify a procedure for petitions.

However, Kao told IPS that the Implementation Act grants the covenants “priority application” over other laws, a principle reaffirmed by Ma himself in a Dec. 18 news conference.

Therefore, Tseng was legally required to respect the right of petition for amnesty by “first certifying that the president had already rejected appeals for amnesty before carrying out” the executions, Kao said.

The petition concluded that the justice minister committed a grave violation of law and abuse of authority and asked the Control Yuan to impeach Tseng.

Kao told IPS that the impeachment petition is distinct from the question of abolition but instead concerns procedural justice.

If people can be executed, regardless of the reasons, without authorities fulfilling the required legal process, Taiwan will be put back on the road to authoritarianism, Kao warned.

He also told IPS that human rights groups are discussing filing criminal charges against Tseng, who could be liable for punishment under Article 127 of the Criminal Code with up to five years’ imprisonment.

Ironically, while the MOJ claims that public polls showed an overwhelming majority in favour of the death penalty, most citizens lack confidence in the judicial process itself.

A poll of 1,073 adults conducted by the Taiwan Thinktank in mid December showed that 64.4 percent believed the judiciary had been “unfair” in its judgements during 2012, compared with just 21.4 percent who believed the justice system was “fair”.

Activists also warned that the executions could further undermine the quality of the judicial process.

Academica Institution for Jurispurdence Deputy Research Fellow Liao Fu-teh told IPS that “the death penalty may be being used as a tool of intimidation”.

Liao cited media reports on Dec. 23, 2012, which related that a suspect being detained for questioning in Hualien in eastern Taiwan in connection with the murder of her mother had been “frightened” by the executions and, after months of denials, confessed to committing the killing with her boyfriend, to avoid being executed.

Criticism of the apparent lack of official respect for the two covenants intensified during 2012.

On Dec. 10 last year, a coalition of civil society, labour, environmental and social movement organisations awarded Ma a paper plaque for “stomping on human rights” just as Ma was presenting an “Asian Democracy and Human Rights Award” to the Thailand-based ECPAT International in Taipei’s Far East Plaza Hotel.

(END)

A Third World War is not impossible, but fortunately is rather unlikely. Let us explore why, and what can be done to prevent it.

Johan Galtung

The worst-case scenario is a world war between the West — NATO, U.S., EU with Japan-Taiwan-South Korea — and the East—the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) with Russia, China, Central Asia as members and India, Pakistan, Iran as observers. With four nuclear powers on each side, and West versus Islam as a major issue. In the centre is the explosive mix of a divided territory (Israel-Palestine) and Jerusalem, a capital divided by a wall.

We have been there before: the Cold War, with West versus Communism as a major issue. In the centre was the explosive mix of a divided Germany, and Berlin, a capital divided by a wall; and a divided Korea, by a demilitarised zone. And yet no direct, hot war, except by proxies; Korea, Vietnam. Why?

No doubt nuclear deterrence was one factor. They went to the brink but turned around–like in the 1962 Cuba-Turkey missile crisis. And no doubt nuclear deterrence also plays a role today, limiting the attacks on Israel, U.S. support for Israeli attacks on Arab-Muslim states ­ Syria-Iran in particular ­and any attack on Russia-China. But nuclear deterrence is not the material out of which positive peace is made: no depolarisation, and certainly no solution and conciliation.

The Cold War NATO-Warsaw Pact system was polarised, with secret police controlling contacts, speech and thoughts, looking for traitors. But the world was not polarised: there was the huge non-aligned movement. Europe was not polarised: there were the 10 neutral, or non-aligned, countries. And ultimately a strong movement against war emerged.

The NATO+-SCO+ system is less polarised, but the world and Europe more. So far, no non-aligned movement, and no strong peace movement.

The United Nations vote showed a 3/4 world united in YES for Palestine, NO to USA-Israel. Both are turning any moral high ground into moral deficit through continued expansion-occupation-siege and invasion-occupation-extrajudicial killings. The world is not against U.S.-Israel defending true homeland borders or 1967 borders but against the force and excesses they seem incapable of reversing. Reverse those policies and they could regain the moral high ground.

But still no actors carrying concrete peace policies like the Helsinki Accords. The reason lies in the difference between the West-Islam and the West-communism conflicts. Islam, Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, covers more of the world territory and population than the West, but has few friends outside; unlike the West, emulated and admired by Russia-China-India, by Latin America and Africa. In all but Israel, Islam has a huge and growing diaspora by immigration-birth-conversion. Not a superpower, not an alliance, only “Islamic cooperation”; but present everywhere.

The result is uncertainty and fear: what do they want? A challenge to other worldviews, guaranteed by the freedoms of speech and religion. Islam offers healing togetherness and sharing to a West suffering from materialist individualism and egoism.

But Islam also threatens Western institutions with unwanted change. Western secular states won the struggle against the church with a secularism also exported to the Muslim colonies as loyalty to the state and the empires behind them. Today parts of the Islamic diaspora hit back, demanding loyalty to Alla’h and the ummah (community) beyond loyalty to Western states.

For immigration to be a peace-building effort, immigrants must respect laws and customs of the host country and be met with curiosity and respect in dialogues, for mutual learning benefiting all. If broken by either or both, stop immigration, and build ummah at home.

How about the other danger spots and zones in the world?

Afghanistan is coming to a close, not only with NATO withdrawal–except to guard what it was all about: a base for a possible war with China and an oil pipeline. There may be wars between India and Pakistan, but no other country feels strongly enough about Kashmir to participate. The world is concerned with Israel not because of anti-Semitism, but because of an alliance that may involve so much of the rest of the world.

North Korea has both nuclear arms and missiles, and will neither attack nor be attacked. The fight for peace treaty and normalisation with the U.S. will probably bear fruits, in the interest of all.

Taiwan and China will slowly converge toward a Hong Kong style solution of one country-two systems, Taiwan as part of China yet highly autonomous. Wisdom would urge the same for a limited Tibet. In neither case do we have conflicts out of which a third world war is made. For that to happen the ties have to be tight, like U.S. to other NATO countries and to Israel. Or, presumably, Russia and China to each other.

We are left with West-Islam. The lack of cohesion on the Islamic side helps. But we are missing a non-aligned Hindu India, lined up with the West in any major confrontation. Indonesia and Egypt are on the Islamic side, neutral Yugoslavia no longer exists, Latin America is Christian-West, and Africa is divided.

We need moderates on both sides. Tunisia-Turkey and the non-aligned powers, Egypt and Indonesia. And the West—maybe Germany, experienced in inter-faith dialogue? Germany should play a major peace role!

(END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

* Johan Galtung, rector of the TRANSCEND Peace University, is author of “The Fall of the US Empire–And Then What?” (www.transcend.org/tup)

Taiwan civic reform, journalist and labour organisations have mobilised against the acquisition of the large Next Media (Taiwan) group by tycoons linked with China. They say this threatens Taiwan’s news freedom and even the survival of its democratic political system.

The Next Media Group owned by Hong Kong-based garment and media owner Jimmy Lai signed a contract in Macao Nov. 29 to sell four media operations of Next Media (Taiwan) for 600 million dollars to five investors, including Want Want China Times group president Tsai Shao-chung (son of controversial Want Want tycoon Tsai Eng-ming), Formosa Plastics Group chairman William Wong and Chinatrust Charity Foundation chairman Jeffrey Koo, Jr.

Taiwan media reported in mid-October that Next Media Group chairman Jimmy Lai planned to sell his Taiwan print and television outlets, namely the profitable Chinese-language Apple Daily, Sharp Daily, Next Weekly and the Next TV cable network to Koo, Wong and unnamed investors in the wake of losing substantial funds in his cable TV venture due to regulatory delays and difficulty in getting the channels onto operating systems.

However, concern over the proposed sale’s impact on Taiwan’s media pluralism, news freedom and democratic politics soared after a leading business biweekly, Wealth Magazine, reported in early November that Tsai may be behind the takeover.

Tsai, who is a major investor in Hong Kong’s pro-Beijing Asia Television, purchased the China Times, the terrestrial China Television (CTV) and CTI-TV cable television network in November 2008 and later purchased the China Systems Network, Taiwan’s largest cable TV service distributor in a deal approved by the National Communications Commission Jul. 25 this year. This was despite bitter opposition by media reform and civic organisations and ‘full court press’ assaults on critics including journalists, scholars and opposition lawmakers by Tsai`s media outlets.

Taiwan Democracy Monitor president Karl Hsu Wei-chun told IPS that the takeover by Next Media (Taiwan) by the five conglomerate tycoons who have major business stakes in the People’s Republic of China “will have a grave structural impact on Taiwan’s democracy.

“Anyone who has eyes can see that this is the method through which China is buying control over Taiwan, just as in Hong Kong in the 1990s,” said TDW’s Hsu.

Concern over the expansion of Tsai’s media empire was already manifested on Sep. 1 when nearly 10,000 journalists, students and NGO activists led by the Association of Taiwan Journalists (ATJ) participated in a ‘March Against Media Monopoly’ in Taipei City.

The imminent takeover of the Next Media (Taiwan) outlets, especially Apple Daily and Next Magazine, has reignited anxiety over freedom of expression, given the performance of Apple Daily.

Founded in 2001 by Lai after the success of Apple Daily and Next Weekly in Hong Kong, Apple Daily, known for a sensationalist and muck-raking style, has become one of top two national newspapers in Taiwan, neck and neck with the ‘Taiwan-centric’ Liberty Times. Both now have far more readership than the former market-leading conservative United Daily News or the China Times.

In the wake of Lai’s decision, student groups, including a ‘Youth Alliance Against Media Monsters’ held an overnight sit-in at the Cabinet building Nov. 27 and clashed occasionally with police. Labour unions, which had quickly organised in the four main Next Media units, held a vigil outside Next Media headquarters on the evening of Nov. 27.

The KMT government of President Ma Ying-jeou has remained largely silent, with Premier Sean Chen stating on Nov. 28 that his government “will respect the judgment” of several independent regulatory commissions on fair trade, finance and communications.

During a public hearing at the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) Nov. 29, scholars, journalists, economists and consumer rights representatives unanimously urged the FTC to veto or at least suspend approval until the national legislature enacts robust legislation to regulate media monopolisation.

ATJ President Chen Siao-yi stressed that Taiwan’s four national newspapers retain decisive “agenda setting” influence as television and radio news media and internet media get their news almost entirely from the four national dailies.

“If these tycoons gain control over 50 percent of Taiwan’s media, we will never know how much news will be lost and not published and how much of what is published is false,” Chen warned.

“Tsai Eng-meng’s WWCT Group will become a vertically and horizontally integrated hegemon if the purchase of Next Media is approved,” National Taiwan University economics department chairwoman Cheng Hsiu-ling told the FTC hearing.

Cheng estimated that Tsai would gain control of over 50 percent of the national newspaper market, 30 percent of the cable TV market and 19 percent of the wireless TV market, and warned this combination “will result in the concentration of advertising and circulation, and force the other two national newspapers out of the market.”

“We will be left with only one giant upstream source of ‘news’,” the NTU economist told IPS.

FTC Commissioner Sun Li-chun has promised that his commission would proceed with its review in a “transparent” manner. (End)

Participants of Duan Yuezhong’s Chinese language class conducted in a local park. Credit: Suvendrini Kakuchi/IPS

By Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, Sep 29 2012 (IPS)

While the 40^th anniversary of the normalisation of Japan-China relations passed under a dark shadow of rising tensions and bitter territorial disputes in East Asia, a strand of citizen-based diplomacy at the grassroots level is emerging in Japan as a path towards regional reconciliation.

Sabre rattling between Japan and its neighbours – namely its primary economic competitors, China and South Korea – reached new heights at the United Nations General Assembly currently underway in New York when Chinese president Hu Jintao dismissed Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiko Noda’s claims to a disputed chain of islands as “illegal and invalid”.

The uninhabited archipelago in the East China Sea, which may shelter large deposits of natural gas, are known as the Senkaku Islands in Japan, Diayou in China and the Tiaoyutai Islands in Taiwan.

The possibly resource-rich cluster that lies below Japan’s southernmost island of Okinawa has long been a major bone of contention between China and Japan, with Taiwan, too, laying claim to the territory.

The Japanese government’s proposal to buy the islands from a private owner sparked a wave of protest across 50 cities in China earlier this month.

The violence, which included the destruction of several Japanese establishments, forced a number of staff members to relocate back to Japan, while hundreds of Japanese tourists cancelled their visits to China.

The Senkaku Islands were not the only source of conflict at the U.N. this week. On Thursday, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak rejected Noda’s vow to protect Japan’s sea and land space – an obvious reference by the latter to the dispute with South Korea over ownership of Takeshima, a pair of rocky islets known in Korean as Dokto.

A street poll conducted by the Tokyo-based Nippon Broadcasting Corporation this month indicated the Japanese public wants the government to take a stronger stance in these territorial disputes, particular where South Korea is concerned.

East Asia political experts here view these tensions as a further threat to the rocky bilateral relations that have existed since diplomatic ties were established with China in 1972 and with South Korea in 1965.

But a growing number of concerned citizens are convinced that grassroots efforts and local diplomacy can help defuse tensions between the agitated neighbours.

These concerned voices are calling for a cooling down of the situation in an attempt to prevent mutual economic losses, trade boycotts or suffocation of the free flow of students, professionals, artists and information between the various countries.

A citizens’ movement for change?

Duan Yuezhong, a Chinese national living in Tokyo, is very dedicated to this movement. Undeterred by political hot-headedness, he is conducting a discussion group for the Japanese public.

“Nothing can stop my efforts in Japan towards a citizen-based approach to nurture closer ties between China and Japan. To withdraw now is to give up on the future,” he told IPS.

Yuezhong, a former journalist in China, has spent almost two decades in Japan. He owns a publishing company that prints books specialising in Japan-China relations and also conducts popular Chinese-language classes at a local park.

Yuezhong has great faith in the fledging citizen’s movement that highlights the need for political restraint and the importance of objective negotiations between countries.

Akiko Ozaki, a Japanese businesswoman who set up a travel agency in China two years ago, echoed these sentiments. She appealed to participants of her annual tour to Dalian, a major port city in the northeast of China, to go ahead with their visit scheduled for next month.

“My tour may survive. For ordinary people like us who have developed close business ties with China it is very difficult to throw away (our) hard work because of political (stubbornness),” she told IPS.

While economic ties have cemented East Asia as a formidable bloc — China has now overtaken the United States to become Japan’s top trading partner — mistrust is deep-rooted due to Japan’s history of colonisation in the region.

“There is a huge perception gap when it comes to understanding Japanese colonisation in all the three countries,” according to professor Masao Okonogi, an expert on Japan-Korea relations at Kyushu University.

“Against the growing international clout of China and South Korea, Japan must seek to put the past behind it,” he explained.

In an effort to do just this, Okonogi participated in several joint study programmes on history that took place on an annual basis between Japan and South Korea until the project was disbanded two years ago.

“Political interference on both sides dealt a severe blow to crucial attempts to foster a deeper sense of mutual understanding of the historical past but we must persevere,” he explained.

Yoichi Tao, scientist and manager of Global Voices – a website that hosts a myriad opinions including those of Chinese and Korean students in Japan – says space for wider debate on differences between Japan and its East Asian neighbours is crucial.

“Pursuing economic development has pushed the vital importance of bridging (misunderstandings) to the back burner. The latest upheaval has (proven) that the economy alone does not bring stability in East Asia,” he told IPS.

Kao Hui Fen, a Taiwanese national in Tokyo, cannot agree more. Fen says after fifteen years in Japan she has become more outspoken about Japanese colonisation of her country, an approach that has not caused her problems.

“I tell my Japanese friends that colonisation is bad. They do not respond angrily and some are even willing to discuss the past objectively,” she said.

Tao believes that sharing honest opinions at the civilian level can weaken conservative and narrow political agendas that have long divided Japan and its closest Asian neighbours.

“People can lead the way forward in East Asia where emotional historical issues have bogged us down for too long,” he said.

(END)

The end of Taiwan’s most controversial death penalty case this week has “punctured the myth that the judicial system never makes mistakes in death penalty cases,” Judicial Reform Foundation (JRF) executive director Lin Feng-cheng told IPS.

A panel of three High Court judges overturned murder convictions and capital sentences Aug. 31 against the so-called ‘Hsichih Trio’ after 21 years of legal battles. Supporters of human rights and opponents of the death penalty gathered at the Taiwan High Court Criminal Appeals building cheered after Su You-chen, chairman of the Chinese Association for Human Rights, announced the  “not guilty” verdicts for Su Chien-ho, Chuang Lin-hsun and Liu Bin-lang.

The case began on Mar. 23, 1991 when a couple, Wu Ming-han and his wife Yeh Ying-lan, living in Hsichih township near Taipei City were found robbed and murdered, having been stabbed 79 times.

On Aug. 13 1991, Wang Wen-hsiao, a neighbour then serving in Taiwan’s Marines, was detained and then formally arrested two days later, based on a fingerprint found at the murder scene.

Wang initially confessed to have conducted the killings alone, but police doubted that Wang could have killed the couple by himself.

During interrogations by Hsichih precinct police, Wang named three other 19-year-old associates, Su Chien-ho, Chuang Lin-hsun and Liu Bin-lang for helping him murder the couple after robbing their home and raping Yeh.

The three suspects confessed to the crimes to the police and were charged with murder under the Act for the Control and Punishment of Banditry at the time, which provided for mandatory death sentences.

Wang was convicted in military court and executed on Jan. 11, 1992 and never directly faced Su and the other two suspects.

After judges refused to accept their claims to have made false confessions under torture, Su, Liu and Chuang were convicted in the Shihlin district court on Feb. 18, 1992 and lost two appeals to the High Court before the Supreme Court finalised their guilty verdicts and imposed death sentences on Feb. 9, 1995.

Although they would normally have been executed within three days, then justice minister (and now president and ruling Chinese Nationalist Party chairman) Ma Ying-jeou refused to sign the execution orders, returning the case to the Supreme Court due to the lack of direct evidence.

The Control Yuan, Taiwan’s watchdog branch of government, launched a probe into the Su Chien-ho case in March 1995 that found numerous errors in the investigation and trial proceedings by the Hsichih police bureau, the Shihlin district court and the High Court.

The “Hsichih Trio” or “Su Chien-ho” case became the focus of a major global human rights campaign, and spurred the drive by Taiwan civil society groups to push for the abolition of the death penalty.

A turning point came in June 2008 when renowned criminologist Henry Lee Chang-yi undertook a detailed investigation of the crime scene and forensic data on behalf of the defendants and concluded that “it is extremely likely that this case was committed by Wang Wen-hsiao alone.”

“This critical forensic research came about because of civil society efforts and not the court,” Judicial Reform Foundation executive director Lin Feng-cheng told IPS. “It was only because this case attracted too much attention and even became the subject of an international campaign were we able to persuade Henry Lee to come here.”

Speaking for the trio, Su Chien-ho said “21 years of trials and retrials has turned us into middle-aged men and our youth is long gone, but we now only have feelings of gratitude and hope to return to normal lives.”

“Senior judicial officials continue to attempt to persuade society that the judicial system never makes mistakes and this myth has blinded many people, but the Su Chien-ho case is an example of a finalized death penalty verdict that was overturned and shown to be wrong,” the JRF spokesman told IPS.

“If their death penalty verdicts had been implemented, they would have been executed just like Chiang Kuo-ching” – an Air Force private wrongfully executed in August 1997 after confessing under torture to a rape-murder, said Lin. “This fact shows how frightening the death penalty truly is.”

President Ma, who as president has overseen the ending of a nearly five-year moratorium on the death penalty with nine executions, told reporters Aug. 31 that he hoped that there would never again be such a case and that there would no longer be cases in which confessions were obtained through improper means from suspects.

Human rights activists warn that Taiwan government prosecutors have sent a message that torture is permissible by refusing to indict a former defence minister and eight other former military officers behind the wrongful execution of a young Air Force private by torturing him into confessing rape and murder.

A young girl was found dead after being raped in the Taiwan Air Force headquarters complex in Taipei in September 1996.

A month later, 20-year-old Air Force private Chiang Kuo-ching was indicted by military prosecutors for the rape-murder. After being convicted by a military tribunal even though he recanted his confession, he was executed by a shot to his head on Aug. 13, 1997.

Chiang’s case became a benchmark human rights issue through a decade-long campaign by his father Chiang Chih-an and his mother Wang Tsai-lien to clear his name. They insisted that Chiang was innocent, and had been tortured into making a false confession.

In May 2010 Control Yuan, Taiwan’s official watchdog, ordered reopening of the case. This led to a re-investigation by the Special Investigation Division (SID) of the Supreme Prosecutors Office early last year. A military re-trial exonerated the late Air Force private in September last year.

Hsu Jung-chou, 35, who had also served in the AOC, was convicted last December of the crime and given an 18-year sentence.

The military court acknowledged that Chiang’s ‘confession’, the prime basis for his conviction by the military tribunal, had been extracted under torture by officers under then Air Force Combat Operations Command (AOC) commander  Chen Chao-min, who was later defence minister from May 2008 to September 2009.

For the first time in Taiwan history, the SID investigation and the military court had identified the perpetrators as well as the victims in a case of state torture. But in May 2011, Taipei District Court prosecutors refrained from indicting any of the implicated former officers on the grounds that the 10-year statute of limitation for offences of “coercion” and “intimidation and endangerment” had expired. The offences carry a maximum punishment of less than three years imprisonment.

After being ordered by the Taiwan High Court Prosecutors Office to re-investigate the case, the Taipei District Court Prosecutors Office again refused Aug. 24 to issue any indictments. It rejected calls by lawyers for the Chiang family that Chao and the other officers should be indicated for murder or for “causing death through abuse of the power of prosecution.”

Taipei District Prosecutor Office spokesman Huang Tieh-hsin said on Aug. 24 that Chen Chao-min and the others could not be indicted for murder even though they had used electric cattle prods to beat and torture Chiang to confess because they aimed to “gain merit by solving the case” and did not deliberately intend to cause Chiang’s wrongful death.

“Since there was no cause and effect relationship, we have decided not to issue any indictment,” Huang stated.

Lawyer Greg Yo Po-hsiang told IPS that Chiang’s mother Wang Tsai-lien, who had earlier said that her son’s exoneration would be “meaningless” unless his torturers were brought to justice, was “furious” when informed of the new finding.

“Since these reasons fly in the face of common sense, her anger is understandable,” said Yo, who is also an executive director of the Taipei Bar Association.

“Chao and the other officers were fully aware that conviction of rape-murder would carry a mandatory death penalty under military law and that therefore it was a virtual certainty that a confession would result in Chiang’s execution,” Yo told IPS.

Yo said the claim that Chen Chao-min and the other officers could not have known that forcing Chiang to confess would result in his death “might have a shred of credibility if there had been any precedents in which persons convicted by military courts of crimes carrying mandatory death sentences had not actually been executed.

“I have not heard of even one such case,” said Yo. Neither Ms Wang nor any of her legal team were asked for their views during the investigation, Yo said.

Lawyers representing Chiang’s mother will now file a motion for “reconsideration”, Yo said, after receiving the official notification of the Taipei District Prosecutor Office’s decision.

Taiwan Alliance Against the Death Penalty executive director Lin Hsin-yi told IPS that the decision not to indict “sends a chilling message that the Taiwan judicial system believes that there is nothing wrong with torture” and shows that “victims of torture will never receive justice and that the persons who tortured them will never need to bear responsibility.”

Lin said there are several death row inmates who have been victims of torture, notably Chiou Ho-shun, now in his 50s, who was arrested in 1989 on suspicion of the kidnap and murder of nine-year old boy and a female insurance agent. He was sentenced to death based almost entirely on confessions obtained in police interrogations.

Despite appeals by Amnesty International, Chiou’s conviction and death sentence were finalised in July 2011 by the Taiwan Supreme Court even though an investigation by Control Yuan in 1994 had found that the investigating police had tortured Chiou and other defendants during their interrogations.

Covenants Watch executive director Kao Yung-cheng told IPS that the decision also cast serious doubt on the willingness and capability of the Taiwan government to implement the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which it ratified and incorporated into domestic law effective December 2009.

Kao, a former prosecutor, told IPS that the ICCPR’s Article 2 requires states which ratify the covenant to ensure that persons who have their rights violated have effective remedies, and to enforce those remedies.

“The most important responsibility of the State is to find and expose the truth and the prosecutors have refused to face this obligation,” Kao told IPS.

As Caribbean leaders meet in St. Lucia this week, they are focusing on a series of routine issues affecting the region, including problems with the smooth operation of the single trading market.

But those from the smaller eastern group of islands are also likely to raise the implications of a recent U.S. court ruling that has much to do with the protracted battle between mainland China and Taiwan for diplomatic recognition in the Caribbean Community bloc.

In the past week, Justice Harold Baer of the Southern District Court of New York handed tiny Grenada a major victory over Taiwan when he ruled that the Asian economic giant had no right to garnish the overseas earnings of Grenada to win back payments for development loans when Taiwan and Grenada were seemingly inseparable diplomatic buddies.

Grenada was one of only 23 countries around the world that had recognised Taiwan as a full sovereign state rather than as a breakaway rebel province of China, as Beijing has long maintained.

But the two had a bitter falling out after the previous government switched allegiance to China and booted out Taiwan, humiliating Taipei and setting off a chain of events that nearly led to full-scale economic hardships for Grenada.

Once China replaced Taiwan as Grenada’s Asian darling, Taiwan began to demand immediate repayment of about 30 million dollars in concession loans to the island, clearly as punishment for being chased off the 344 sq km island of 110,000 north of Trinidad, even though authorities there had asked for time to work out a payment plan. Taiwan basically said no, and demanded its money in a shorter period.

Lawyers for Grenada took the matter to a U.S. court because Taiwan had successfully begun to garnish the island’s earnings from cruise lines and air travel, putting the money – nearly a million dollars – into its own account rather than Grenada’s.

Wazir Mohamed, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Indiana, East, says there are lessons for small island nations caught in the middle of a tug-of-war by developed nations to win hearts and minds in the region and access minerals and other natural resources.

“There are a lot of implications for small states being caught in a new type of cold War in the world today,” he told IPS. “Nothing has changed in the way capital is being used by the West and nations like China. It is a new form of colonialism, but the only thing different to the past is that this new form is now being implemented and effected much more rapidly than in the past using capital that is very, very mobile.

“Caribbean nations have to be careful about being caught in the middle of these geopolitical fights involving other nations,” said the Caribbean-born Mohamed.

For Grenada, cruise lines were on the verge of scrubbing St. George’s as a port of call because they were uncomfortable being in the middle of a nasty diplomatic row that forced them to take the side of one over the other.

In his ruling, Justice Baer called the actions of Taiwan inimical to the island’s development since Grenada depends on money from the cruise and airline sectors “as a source of revenue for carrying out public functions”.

As widely expected, lawyers for Taiwan say they will appeal. For now, Grenadian authorities are breathing easier even as they prepare for the very likely round two legal process.

For other nations, like summit host St. Lucia, the issue is of prime importance and one to monitor very closely as it could also face similar problems. The last government in 2007 had ironically kicked out China and replaced it with Taiwan, upending the decision of another administration in the late 1990s.

China has so far not retaliated by demanding back its money, notably funding for a new sports stadium, hospital and buildings in St. Lucia’s industrial zone, but has condemned local officials outright for its diplomatic expulsion.

“We have been very careful about making this decision, and now that we have taken it, we do not expect the Chinese will love us any more for it,” said then Foreign Minister Rufus George Bousquet. “But we expect that they will conduct themselves in a manner that is acceptable to our government.”

Bousquet’s government has since lost power. The new administration of Prime Minister Kenny Anthony has already spoken to both sides, but for now is playing it safe and has remained loyal to Taiwan even though it had chosen China in a previous period in office. Bousquet had also said the policy back then was to deal with which donor was willing to give more.

Once Taiwan departed Grenada, China moved in to win hearts, funding a national sports stadium and donating generously to reconstruction efforts in the aftermath of Hurricane Ivan, which devastated the island in September 2004.

Other Caribbean trade bloc nations that recognise Taiwan over China include Haiti, St. Kitts, St. Vincent, Belize and now St. Lucia, even though the official policy of the bloc is for a “one China Policy”.

The Grenada issue is not an official agenda item for leaders when they meet in the main of two annual summits from Wednesday to Friday, but officials all say the court ruling has implications and lessons for island nations still caught between China and Taiwan for diplomatic recognition.

For now it appears that mainland China is winning. Last September, many regional leaders travelled to Trinidad for the China-Caricom forum where the delegation from Beijing offered up to one billion dollars in soft loans to fund projects throughout the region.

Some states, like bloc headquarters Guyana, signed on quickly by proposing various projects for funding, but Taiwan does not have that luxury as its diplomatic and aid outreach is confined only to those with which it has formal diplomatic relations.

Environmental and community activists from Taiwan will enliven the United Nations Sustainable Development Conference, dubbed Rio+20, and the parallel People’s Summit, with one of the island’s most prominent social protest music groups, the Village Armed Youth Band.

Even though Taiwan’s 23 million people have not been represented in the U.N. since October 1971, several delegations will attend the Rio+20 conference and its side events, including a group of government officials led by Environmental Protection Administration Vice Minister, Yeh Hsin-cheng; environmental officials from the island nation’s five special municipalities; and a civic Taiwan Action NGO (TANGO) delegation.

Led by Taiwan Environmental Protection Union (TEPU) President Wang Chun-hsiu, who attended both the fist earth summit in Rio back in 1992 and the 2002 Johannesburg meetings, the 18-person TANGO delegation includes activists from the Homeworkers United Foundation, the Green Citizens’ Action Alliance Taiwan, the Community Empowering Society, the Taiwan Environmental Info Association, the Society of Wilderness and four youth delegates from the Taiwan Youth Climate Coalition.

On Sunday, the TANGO delegation held an event entitled, ‘From Energy Democrazy to Energy Democracy: Taiwan’s PPP (People’s Power Plant Movement) and Green Collar Taiwan.’

They also plan to hold two protest marches in Rio.

Wang said the TANGO delegation would enliven its activities with performances by the radical Taiwan folk-rock group, the Village Armed Youth Band, thereby introducing to People’s Summit participants the generally unappreciated richness of Taiwan’s social protest music.

Based in central Taiwan’s Taichung City, the three-person band has emerged as a potent grassroots voice for Taiwan’s anti-nuclear power movement and numerous other environmental causes as well as struggles by farmers to resist expropriation of their land by central and local governments for industrial development plans.

Village Armed Youth Band guitarist and vocalist Chiang Yu-da, usually known as “Ah Da”, composed a new song, ‘Formosa Etude’, specifically for the Rio+20 meet, which begins with the words, “Formosa, I have written a mother’s poem for you…will you not listen to my singing?”

“Taiwan should not just be seen, but also heard,” said Chiang, whose group features an almost entirely acoustic sound with Siao Chang-jhan (“Ah-Chan”) on djembe drums and Wei Hong-yang (“Lichun”) on violin.

“Most of our songs are concerned with the degradation of Taiwan’s agriculture and rural and land justice,” said Chiang, who stated that the five-year-old band took its inspiration from Taiwanese “rice bomber” and activist Yang Ju-men, who planted 17 small explosives made mainly of rice in the early 2000s to protest Taiwan’s entry into the World Trade Organisation and push the government to protect the interests of farmers.

“I brought that attitude of being armed into our music, whose ideals are the same as those which Yang Ju-men expressed with his bombs,” said Chiang, a graduate of the philosophy department at Tunghai University in Taichung.

A notable example of this theme was Chiang’s ‘The Song of the White Dolphin’, which protested the threat posed to the critically endangered marine mammal (also known as the Taiwan Pink Dolphin) by the government’s plans to build a major Kuokuang Petrochemical Project on Taiwan’s central west coast, on “reclaimed” land in the Dacheng Wetlands that are the white dolphin’s last habitat in the country.

The song, whose simple lyrics comprise a lament by the white dolphin that “cannot find its mother”, helped fuel a nationwide civic movement in which over 30,000 citizens offered to contribute to a proposed fund to buy 200 hectares of wetlands as a reserve for the dolphins.

The ‘Save the Taiwan Pink Dolphin’ movement gave national and international prominence to the decade-long campaign by local farmers and environmentalists to block the massive project led by the state-owned CPC Corporation and other petrochemical firms and played a major role in the announcement by President and ruling Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang or KMT) Chairman Ma Ying-jeou on Apr. 22, 2011 that the complex “will not be built in Changhua County.”

Besides performing in numerous protest rallies, on university campuses and at NGO meetings around Taiwan, the Village Armed Youth has issued two VCDs, the first in 2009 and the second, ‘Return Our Lands’, a year later, while ‘The Song of the White Dolphin’ was included in a collection called ‘Petrochemical Nation’ issued by the Changhua County Environmental Protection Union in 2011.

‘Return Our Land’, which has also been produced as a seven-minute MTV video, was written and performed in support of the ongoing struggle of residents of Siangsihliao village against expropriation of their land for an expansion project of the Taichung Technological Zone.

Chiang said the group would perform mainly environmental and land justice songs in Rio. These may include ‘No Justice, No Peace’, ‘I Don`t Want to Work the Farm Anymore’ and ‘The Devil’s Gift’, a protest song about the government’s continued push to develop nuclear power.

Relating that he translated the band’s songs into English with photographs illustrating their backgrounds, Chiang told IPS, “I hope through our music we can have dialogue with people from other countries and explain Taiwan’s experiences, what is happening now in Taiwan and what the Taiwan people are doing about it.”

(END)

Earlier this week a coalition of rights organisations issued a ‘shadow report’ on Taiwan’s compliance with two international human rights covenants, which it incorporated into domestic law in 2009, probing the country’s track record on human rights.

Liao Fu-teh, associate research fellow at the Academia Sinica Institute of Law, who edited the shadow report, said, “The government itself thinks it is in fine health, but from the standpoint of civil society we find that its body may have high blood pressure and even some worrisome tumours.”

The ‘Taiwan Human Rights Report 2011: Shadow Reports on the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) from NGOs’ published by the Taiwan Association for Human Rights and Covenants Watch, a coalition of over 60 civil organisations, was formally released on May 22.

“We probably set a record in responding to a national human rights report with a shadow report within one month,” said Covenant Watch Convenor Kao Yung-cheng.

The official report was released Apr. 20, by President and ruling Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang or KMT) Chairman Ma Ying-jeou, just over three years after Taiwan’s national legislature ratified the ICCPR and ICESCR and enacted an “implementation law” for their domestic application, effective Dec. 10, 2009.

Liao said the official report failed to incorporate the numerous “general comments” drafted by the United Nations Human Rights Commission for the ICCPR and by the U.N. Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights for the ICESCR, which provide concrete interpretations of the content of human rights provisions on major thematic issues.

“The government thus is unable to have a complete understanding of how these covenants are supposed to be applied to many substantive issues,” Liao added, noting that the Taiwan government has yet to even publish a full Chinese-language edition of the general comments for use by government agencies.

Kao said the civil shadow report responded to numerous shortcomings in the KMT government’s official report, raised human rights issues not mentioned in the government’s review and offered specific recommendations for improvement on each article.

With regard to the ICCPR, the shadow report reviewed the KMT government’s human rights performance in the fields of: the right to self-determination, the right to life, prohibition of torture, prohibition of human slavery, personal freedom, the rights of liberty of movement and residence, the right to privacy, the rights of freedom of expression and news freedom, the rights of assembly and association, the rights of children, the right of political participation and the rights of minority peoples.

With regard to the ICESCR, the shadow report dealt with human rights problems in the fields of: the rights of work, working conditions and labour rights, the right to a suitable standard of living, the right to health and the right to receive education and the need to address various types of discrimination.

With regard to the right to self-determination, enshrined in the first article of both covenants, the shadow report related that the government had failed to grant equal treatment for Taiwan’s indigenous peoples, that the KMT government had even violated many if not most of the articles of the ‘Indigenous Peoples Basic Law’ and that a draft bill introduced by the KMT for indigenous peoples self-government would actually abrogate the land rights of indigenous peoples.

Moreover, the shadow report noted that the stiff 50 percent voter turnout quorum and the vetting of referendum topics by a referendum review committee in January 2004 had “added difficultly on to difficulty for the exercise by people of the right to direct democracy.”

Such rules have effectively stymied citizen efforts to use referendums to resolve major public policy controversies – such as whether to continue construction of a fourth nuclear power plant – and have blocked efforts by the Dawu indigenous people on Orchid Island (Lanyu) to secure the removal of a low- level radioactive waste storage facility established without permission of the residents.

With regard to the right to life in Article Six, the report urged the government to respect the U.N. “Safeguards Guaranteeing Protection of the Rights of those Facing the Death Penalty,” including by prohibiting the execution of psychologically or mentally impaired convicts; establish a clear and complete procedure for appeals for clemency; and review whether current procedures and standards for determining death sentences are in keeping with the ICCPR.

Citing capital punishment cases in which convictions and sentences were based on confessions extracted using torture, the shadow report reminded the government that States bound by the ICCPR are obliged to prohibit mistreatment or torture of suspects, provide channels for appeal and reparations for torture victims and improve the provision of medical care for convicts or other persons under detention.

The shadow report also stated that Taiwan’s attempts to prevent human trafficking were “full of problems”, including grossly inadequate shelter facilities and interpretation and protection services for victims and insufficient training of staff in related labour affairs and judicial agencies.

With regard to the right of liberty and security ensured by Article 9 of the ICCPR, the shadow report called on the government to expunge current rules that permit extended (and in some cases indefinite) detention for persons suspected of “serious crimes”.

The shadow report devoted considerable space to Article 19 of the ICCPR and noted that the government document “did not seriously address the problems encountered in Taiwan regarding freedom of expression and news freedom.”

“Although Taiwan is disadvantaged by being isolated from the U.N. system, we have an opportunity to show some leadership in innovation and obtain a deeper and more profound review of our human rights situation than can be done by the overburdened UNHRC,” said Peter Huang Wen-hsiung, former president of the Taiwan Association for Human Rights.

Huang stated that a seven-person committee of civil organisation representatives and members of the presidential human rights advisory commission has been formed to map out procedures for the review and to choose a panel of prominent human rights specialists to review Taiwan’s national report and submissions of shadow and alternative NGO reports.

(END)