Despite ratification of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Social and Cultural Rights (ICSCR), and the legislature’s passage of a law to make them legally binding, human rights activists, lawyers and students who attended a workshop on their implementation yesterday said that most of the nation’s officials and politicians still don’t know much about them.
“There are many laws in Taiwan that are actually in violation of the ICCPR and the ICSCR, but the violations are somehow not noticed,” said Huang Man-ting (黃曼婷), a university student who attended yesterday’s seminar.
For instance, township mayoral elections will be canceled after townships become districts in counties that are to be upgraded to special municipalities by the end of the year.
“Well, some lecturers in the seminar think that it’s questionable whether such a change is in accordance with the two covenants, because that’s a restriction of people’s rights to participate in politics,” he said.
Huang said both the government and the legislature supported passage of the two covenants only to please the public.
“Politicians turn a blind eye on violations either because of their ignorance or because they care more about their own political interests,” she said.
Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty executive director Lin Hsin-yi (林欣怡) panned the position of Tseng Yun-fu (曾勇夫) — who is to be sworn-in as Minister of Justice today — on the death penalty.
“Tseng said that whether capital punishment should be abolished should be decided when the public reaches a consensus, and that the ministry under his leadership would not have its own opinion,” Lin said. “This is in violation of the ICCPR because it stipulates that a signatory state should eventually abolish the death penalty.”
Tseng’s position not only violated the ICCPR, but it also went against both President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and Premier Wu Den-yih’s (吳敦義) positions, as both of them have stated that ending the death penalty is the government’s long-term policy objective, he said.
Nigel Li (李念祖), an attorney and lecturer in the seminar, agreed.
He said that although Article 6 of the ICCPR provides provisional measures to countries with the death penalty in the transitional period, the covenant’s ultimate objective is to require all signatory state parties to abolish capital punishment.
Shih Yi-hsiang (施逸翔), a research assistant at Soochow University’s department of political science, said the two covenants were ratified and enacted in such a hurry that “both the government and the people don’t really know what they are about.”
“So I think a seminar like this is a very good chance for the public — including myself — to learn more about them,” he said. “I think the government should take responsibility for educating the public about the ICCPR and the ICSCR too.”
An apartment building in New Taipei City’s Sanchong District (三重) collapsed last night after a nearby construction project earlier in the day allegedly caused it to tilt. Shortly after work began at 9am on an ongoing excavation of a construction site on Liuzhang Street (六張街), two neighboring apartment buildings tilted and cracked, leading to exterior tiles peeling off, city officials said. The fire department then dispatched personnel to help evacuate 22 residents from nine households. After the incident, the city government first filled the building at No. 190, which appeared to be more badly affected, with water to stabilize the
Taiwan plans to cull as many as 120,000 invasive green iguanas this year to curb the species’ impact on local farmers, the Ministry of Agriculture said. Chiu Kuo-hao (邱國皓), a section chief in the ministry’s Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency, on Sunday said that green iguanas have been recorded across southern Taiwan and as far north as Taichung. Although there is no reliable data on the species’ total population in the country, it has been estimated to be about 200,000, he said. Chiu said about 70,000 iguanas were culled last year, including about 45,000 in Pingtung County, 12,000 in Tainan, 9,900 in
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
ALLEGED SABOTAGE: The damage inflicted by the vessel did not affect connection, as data were immediately rerouted to other cables, Chunghwa Telecom said Taiwan suspects that a Chinese-owned cargo vessel damaged an undersea cable near its northeastern coast on Friday, in an alleged act of sabotage that highlights the vulnerabilities of Taipei’s offshore communications infrastructure. The ship is owned by a Hong Kong-registered company whose director is Chinese, the Financial Times reported on Sunday. An unidentified Taiwanese official cited in the report described the case as sabotage. The incident followed another Chinese vessel’s suspected involvement in the breakages of data cables in the Baltic Sea in November last year. While fishing trawlers are known to sometimes damage such equipment, nation states have also
RSS