An increase in reported cases of domestic violence among non-cohabiting unmarried couples shows how society has changed and why such violence should be treated as a crime, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wu Yi-chen (吳宜臻) told a news conference yesterday.
“As the natures of people’s relationships and family structures become more diverse within a changing society, so do the types of domestic violence between partners. However, the Domestic Violence Prevention Act (家庭暴力防治法) has not kept up with these changes,” Wu said.
Violence between unmarried partners who do not live together has the dubious distinction of not being covered by the act, and a survey conducted by the Taipei Women’s Rescue Foundation (TWRF) between August and October last year found that 23.8 percent of domestic violence cases fell into that category, with most of the victims being women aged between 18 and 25 years old, she said.
Photo: Wang Min-wei, Taipei Times
“The current legislation prevents these victims from applying for restraining orders. They can only file criminal lawsuits after being physically assaulted or threatened,” Wu added.
The lawmaker said she would propose to amend the act in the next legislative session, and called on the public to support such a move.
The government should provide all victims of domestic abuse with legal protection, said Wang Yueh-hao (王玥好), deputy executive officer of the Garden of Hope Foundation, citing a case in which a victim who was stalked and harassed by a former partner was not able to obtain a restraining order until providing the court with evidence that the two had lived together on weekends before they separated.
TWRF chief executive officer Kang Shu-hua (康淑華) called for Taiwan to follow the examples set by some Western countries which offer protection to victims of violence in cases where the couple are unmarried and do not live together.
“The victims of more than 25 percent of the reported cases of domestic violence in Taiwan do not live with their current or former partners, which means that more than one-quarter of all victims of such abuse are not protected by law,” Kang said.
Taiwan yesterday condemned the recent increase in Chinese coast guard-escorted fishing vessels operating illegally in waters around the Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) in the South China Sea. Unusually large groupings of Chinese fishing vessels began to appear around the islands on Feb. 15, when at least six motherships and 29 smaller boats were sighted, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said in a news release. While CGA vessels were dispatched to expel the Chinese boats, Chinese coast guard ships trespassed into Taiwan’s restricted waters and unsuccessfully attempted to interfere, the CGA said. Due to the provocation, the CGA initiated an operation to increase
A crowd of over 200 people gathered outside the Taipei District Court as two sisters indicted for abusing a 1-year-old boy to death attended a preliminary hearing in the case yesterday afternoon. The crowd held up signs and chanted slogans calling for aggravated penalties in child abuse cases and asking for no bail and “capital punishment.” They also held white flowers in memory of the boy, nicknamed Kai Kai (剴剴), who was allegedly tortured to death by the sisters in December 2023. The boy died four months after being placed in full-time foster care with the
The Shanlan Express (山嵐號), or “Mountain Mist Express,” is scheduled to launch on April 19 as part of the centennial celebration of the inauguration of the Taitung Line. The tourism express train was renovated from the Taiwan Railway Corp’s EMU500 commuter trains. It has four carriages and a seating capacity of 60 passengers. Lion Travel is arranging railway tours for the express service. Several news outlets were invited to experience the pilot tour on the new express train service, which is to operate between Hualien Railway Station and Chihshang (池上) Railway Station in Taitung County. It would also be the first tourism service
The Chinese military has boosted its capability to fight at a high tempo using the element of surprise and new technology, the Ministry of National Defense said in the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) published on Monday last week. The ministry highlighted Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) developments showing significant changes in Beijing’s strategy for war on Taiwan. The PLA has made significant headway in building capabilities for all-weather, multi-domain intelligence, surveillance, operational control and a joint air-sea blockade against Taiwan’s lines of communication, it said. The PLA has also improved its capabilities in direct amphibious assault operations aimed at seizing strategically important beaches,
RSS