A group of prostitutes and advocates for the rights of sex workers yesterday denounced Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) for depriving prostitutes of their right to work and urged the Taipei City Govern-ment to legitimize prostitution.
After Taipei criminalized prostitution in 1997, the brothels in Wanhua District (
"Banning prostitution violates the spirit of the Constitution, which protects [the people's] right to work. The city government should help us seek solutions, instead of dodging the responsibility by saying that it can do nothing but follow the law," said Wang Fang-ping (
Wang said that he city government has clamped down on 9,796 illegal prostitutes over the past seven years in accordance with the Law of Maintaining Public Order (
Of the 128 prostitutes in the city, more than 66 percent went underground after the law was promulgated, while 6.4 percent committed suicide, Wang said.
As current laws punish prostitutes, but not brothel owners or pimps, Wang said that the city government should defend the livelihoods of the disadvantaged group, legalize prostitution in the city and push for the central government to do the same.
Ma, citing the example of thriving illegal brothels in the Netherlands despite the legalization of prostitution, argued that the city government had no choice but to follow the law.
"Legalizing prostitution would spark controversy ... It will also take a long time before the public can accept licensed brothels being set up in their districts," Ma told the group.
After then mayor Chen Shui-bian (
The city government has spent about NT$63 million to provide job training and employment search services to workers in the sex industry. Some say, however, that they had found it hard to survive in other industries given their lack of skills and fear of discrimination.
"We used to rely on ourselves to make money. Now we are wasting taxpayers' money. Why don't you just legalize prostitution?" said Li Chun, a prostitute who only wanted to be identified by her nickname.
Ma promised to hold public hearings, inviting sex workers and legislators to raise public awareness on the issue before pushing for amending the laws.
"It took Holland 200 years before prostitution was legalized. Don't think that it's easy to change public attitude towards prostitution. This is a problem that can't be solved quickly," he said.
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it is fully aware of the situation following reports that the son of ousted Chinese politician Bo Xilai (薄熙來) has arrived in Taiwan and is to marry a Taiwanese. Local media reported that Bo Guagua (薄瓜瓜), son of the former member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, is to marry the granddaughter of Luodong Poh-Ai Hospital founder Hsu Wen-cheng (許文政). The pair met when studying abroad and arranged to get married this year, with the wedding breakfast to be held at The One holiday resort in Hsinchu
The Taipei Zoo on Saturday said it would pursue legal action against a man who was filmed climbing over a railing to tease and feed spotted hyenas in their enclosure earlier that day. In videos uploaded to social media on Saturday, a man can be seen climbing over a protective railing and approaching a ledge above the zoo’s spotted hyena enclosure, before dropping unidentified objects down to two of the animals. The Taipei Zoo in a statement said the man’s actions were “extremely inappropriate and even illegal.” In addition to monitoring the hyenas’ health, the zoo would collect evidence provided by the public
‘SIGN OF DANGER’: Beijing has never directly named Taiwanese leaders before, so China is saying that its actions are aimed at the DPP, a foundation official said National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) yesterday accused Beijing of spreading propaganda, saying that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had singled out President William Lai (賴清德) in his meeting with US President Joe Biden when talking about those whose “true nature” seek Taiwanese independence. The Biden-Xi meeting took place on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Peru on Saturday. “If the US cares about maintaining peace across the Taiwan Strait, it is crucial that it sees clearly the true nature of Lai and the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in seeking Taiwanese independence, handles the Taiwan question with extra
A decision to describe a Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement on Singapore’s Taiwan policy as “erroneous” was made because the city-state has its own “one China policy” and has not followed Beijing’s “one China principle,” Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tien Chung-kwang (田中光) said yesterday. It has been a longstanding practice for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to speak on other countries’ behalf concerning Taiwan, Tien said. The latest example was a statement issued by the PRC after a meeting between Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on the sidelines of the APEC summit