Women's groups gathered yesterday to commemorate the ninth anniversary of the murder of feminist Peng Wan-ru (
Peng, chief of the Democratic Progressive Party's (DPP) Women's Affairs Department, was raped and killed while in Kaohsiung for a party meeting. She was last seen getting into a taxi the night before the DPP convention; her body was found three days later outside an abandoned Kaohsiung County warehouse, with more than 30 stab wounds.
Her killer was never caught.
Peng's murder underscored the threat to women's safety in this country. At the time of her murder, the focus was on crime prevention and public safety, the groups said yesterday, while the gender issue was largely ignored.
However, in memory of Peng, many women's groups were formed and these groups worked together to pressure the government into establishing new laws and regulations to protect the rights of women, said Chen Man-li (陳曼麗), director of the National Union of Taiwan Women Association.
These organizations have also provided women with employment counseling and legal aid over the years, including services for foreign spouses, whose numbers have skyrocketed in the recent years, Chen said.
The groups used yesterday's gathering to review the government's efforts in the past nine years to protect women's rights.
Attorney Yu Mei-nu (尤美女) recalled that at a conference held after Peng's murder, the Executive Yuan established the Committee for the Promotion of Women's Rights in 1997, while the Ministry of Education set up the Committee for Gender Equality Education. In 1999, the Ministry of the Interior established the Committee Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Abuse, she said.
Yu said that Peng's death highlighted the plight of women both for the general public and the government and also helped encourage inter-governmental cooperation to protect women's rights.
In recent years, several laws have also been passed to ensure women's rights, Yu said, such as the Domestic Violence Law (家暴法) in 1998 and the Sexual Assault Protection Law (性騷擾防治法), which was passed earlier this year.
In addition, more women have taken an active role in politics and are no longer mere observers anymore, said Huang Tsang-ling (黃長玲), chairwoman of the Awakening Foundation.
Huang said a major breakthrough was made in 1997, when the DPP passed a measure to reserve for "either sex" one-quarter of all seats of elected party committees and candidates for elected public offices.
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) followed suit, stipulating that at least one-fourth of its committee members and candidate slots would be for women, Huang said.
DEEPER REVIEW: After receiving 19 hospital reports of suspected food poisoning, the Taipei Department of Health applied for an epidemiological investigation A buffet restaurant in Taipei’s Xinyi District (信義) is to be fined NT$3 million (US$91,233) after it remained opened despite an order to suspend operations following reports that 32 people had been treated for suspected food poisoning, the Taipei Department of Health said yesterday. The health department said it on Tuesday received reports from hospitals of people who had suspected food poisoning symptoms, including nausea, vomiting, stomach pain and diarrhea, after they ate at an INPARADISE (饗饗) branch in Breeze Xinyi on Sunday and Monday. As more than six people who ate at the restaurant sought medical treatment, the department ordered the
A strong continental cold air mass and abundant moisture bringing snow to mountains 3,000m and higher over the past few days are a reminder that more than 60 years ago Taiwan had an outdoor ski resort that gradually disappeared in part due to climate change. On Oct. 24, 2021, the National Development Council posted a series of photographs on Facebook recounting the days when Taiwan had a ski resort on Hehuanshan (合歡山) in Nantou County. More than 60 years ago, when developing a branch of the Central Cross-Island Highway, the government discovered that Hehuanshan, with an elevation of more than 3,100m,
Taiwan’s population last year shrank further and births continued to decline to a yearly low, the Ministry of the Interior announced today. The ministry published the 2024 population demographics statistics, highlighting record lows in births and bringing attention to Taiwan’s aging population. The nation’s population last year stood at 23,400,220, a decrease of 20,222 individuals compared to 2023. Last year, there were 134,856 births, representing a crude birth rate of 5.76 per 1,000 people, a slight decline from 2023’s 135,571 births and 5.81 crude birth rate. This decrease of 715 births resulted in a new record low per the ministry’s data. Since 2016, which saw
SECURITY: To protect the nation’s Internet cables, the navy should use buoys marking waters within 50m of them as a restricted zone, a former navy squadron commander said A Chinese cargo ship repeatedly intruded into Taiwan’s contiguous and sovereign waters for three months before allegedly damaging an undersea Internet cable off Kaohsiung, a Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) investigation revealed. Using publicly available information, the Liberty Times was able to reconstruct the Shunxing-39’s movements near Taiwan since Double Ten National Day last year. Taiwanese officials did not respond to the freighter’s intrusions until Friday last week, when the ship, registered in Cameroon and Tanzania, turned off its automatic identification system shortly before damage was inflicted to a key cable linking Taiwan to the rest of
RSS