Protest regulations should be revised to remove unreasonable restrictions and reduce police discretion, civic groups said yesterday.
“The Assembly and Parade Act (集會遊行法) was fundamentally passed in hopes of preventing people from taking to the streets,” said Assembly and Parade Act Amendment Alliance member Chou Yu-hsiu (周宇修), a lawyer.
“The law was originally titled the ‘Assembly and Parade Act for the Period of the Suppression of the Communist Rebellion’ when it was passed, and the title was changed only after martial law was lifted,” he said.
While provisions of the law had been struck down as unconstitutional by the Judicial Yuan last year, the legislature has yet to pass revisions, he said, calling for requirements that demonstrators “apply” to protest be amended to only require “notification.”
While large demonstrations rarely run into difficulties because of the weight of public opinion, small protests on less well-known issues face many restrictions under the act, along with related portions of the Social Order Maintenance Act (SOMA, 社會秩序維護法) and the Criminal Code, he said.
Alliance member Hsu Jen-shou (許仁碩) — a Taiwan Association for Human Rights legal specialist — said that police have shifted toward using SOMA and the Criminal Code to regulate protests, as judges have increasingly struck down lawsuits based on the Assembly and Parade Act.
“Protests should not be viewed as preparation for committing a crime,” he said, calling for the curbing of police discretion to decide protest “red lines.”
Alliance member Lin Ching-how (林靖豪) said that broad police discretion enabled them to use lawsuits to increase the cost of protests, citing “loose” regulations forbidding “obstruction of the execution of public duties,” allowing the arrest of demonstrators sitting in silent protest.
The groups said that police often target protesters who deliver speeches for arrest and prosecution, seeking to “kill a chicken to scare the monkeys” — a Mandarin idiom for making an example out of someone to scare others.
The unwillingness of public prosecutors to take cases against police officers makes its difficult to collect evidence in case of police misconduct, Hsu said, adding that it is often difficult to identify the responsible officers.
The groups also criticized as “unfair” and “undemocratic” requirements that activists post hefty deposits for “road usage” as part of protest applications, saying that the requirement gives an advantage to corporations, which can easily afford to “purchase” “road usage” rights near their offices to block protests.
“The protection of protest rights is a class question,” Taiwan Higher Education Union head organizer Lin Por-yee (林柏儀) said. “Big corporations do not need protest marches because all they have to do to work things out is pick up the phone.”
‘DENIAL DEFENSE’: The US would increase its military presence with uncrewed ships, and submarines, while boosting defense in the Indo-Pacific, a Pete Hegseth memo said The US is reorienting its military strategy to focus primarily on deterring a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, a memo signed by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth showed. The memo also called on Taiwan to increase its defense spending. The document, known as the “Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance,” was distributed this month and detailed the national defense plans of US President Donald Trump’s administration, an article in the Washington Post said on Saturday. It outlines how the US can prepare for a potential war with China and defend itself from threats in the “near abroad,” including Greenland and the Panama
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is maintaining close ties with Beijing, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said yesterday, hours after a new round of Chinese military drills in the Taiwan Strait began. Political parties in a democracy have a responsibility to be loyal to the nation and defend its sovereignty, DPP spokesman Justin Wu (吳崢) told a news conference in Taipei. His comments came hours after Beijing announced via Chinese state media that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s Eastern Theater Command was holding large-scale drills simulating a multi-pronged attack on Taiwan. Contrary to the KMT’s claims that it is staunchly anti-communist, KMT Deputy
RESPONSE: The government would investigate incidents of Taiwanese entertainers in China promoting CCP propaganda online in contravention of the law, the source said Taiwanese entertainers living in China who are found to have contravened cross-strait regulations or collaborated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) could be subject to fines, a source said on Sunday. Several Taiwanese entertainers have posted on the social media platform Sina Weibo saying that Taiwan “must be returned” to China, and sharing news articles from Chinese state media. In response, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) has asked the Ministry of Culture to investigate whether the entertainers had contravened any laws, and asked for them to be questioned upon their return to Taiwan, an official familiar with the matter said. To curb repeated
Myanmar has turned down an offer of assistance from Taiwanese search-and-rescue teams after a magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck the nation on Friday last week, saying other international aid is sufficient, the National Fire Agency said yesterday. More than 1,700 have been killed and 3,400 injured in the quake that struck near the central Myanmar city of Mandalay early on Friday afternoon, followed minutes later by a magnitude 6.7 aftershock. Worldwide, 13 international search-and-rescue teams have been deployed, with another 13 teams mobilizing, the agency said. Taiwan’s search-and-rescue teams were on standby, but have since been told to stand down, as
RSS