Human rights and environmental considerations should be incorporated into the government’s New Southbound Policy, a group of Taiwanese and Vietnamese campaigners said yesterday, proposing measures to remedy the problems revealed by a major environmental scandal.
“The New Southbound Policy only focuses on Taiwan’s development — not the development of Southeast Asia as a whole — and it does not place any emphasis on environmental protection and societal growth. The policy needs to include these kinds of issues to make sure that investors are accountable,” Vietnamese Catholic Bishop Nguyen Thai Hop said.
Nguyen’s Vinh diocese encompasses a swathe of the seacoast affected by a mass fish die-off last year that was linked to pollution caused by a steel plant owned by a Vietnamese subsidiary of Formosa Plastics Group.
Photo: Chang Chia-ming, Taipei Times
He made the remarks at a news conference attended by Vietnamese migrant workers, after presenting a petition to the Presidential Office, saying that stricter overseas investment regulations could have prevented the disaster and would enable the nation to differentiate itself from China.
“This would help prevent Taiwanese firms from being targeted during anti-China riots,” he said, referring to riots in 2014 when more than 100 Taiwanese factories were attacked by people protesting against Chinese activities in the South China Sea.
Safeguards do not need to be overly strict, as long as they are reasonable, fair and just, he said.
Environmental Jurists Association secretary-general Lin Jen-hui (林仁惠) called for amendments to the Statute for Industrial Innovation (產業創新條例) to grant the Ministry of Economic Affairs the authority to bar Taiwanese overseas investment projects that could violate the rights of workers and people in the host nation.
Companies should be required to submit human rights impact assessment reports along with their applications and the government should have the power to revoke investment permits of companies that are found to have reneged on their pledges, Lin said.
PENALTY
“Any company that violates their promises should face a fine, unlike the current situation where the government’s hands are tied,” she said.
Covenants Watch chief executive officer Huang Yi-bee (黃怡碧) said that citizens of foreign states should be allowed to seek redress and compensation in Taiwanese courts for human rights violations committed by Taiwanese firms abroad.
Nguyen called on the government to put pressure on Formosa Plastics to increase the compensation offered to people affected by the mass fish die-off and require the Vietnamese government to clarify how the money would be distributed, such as publicizing the amount of compensation provided to each person.
“The US$500 million compensation, to which the Vietnamese government agreed, was not approved by the public and did not go through a court — it is a meager amount, given the number of people affected,” he said, adding that the Catholic Church is in the process of aggregating victims’ claims to estimate the amount of compensation required.
Huang said that the church has become a conduit for the victims to express their opposition to the Vietnamese government’s handling of compensation, because many of them are Catholics and the government is unwilling to crack down on the church.
The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) yesterday said it had deployed patrol vessels to expel a China Coast Guard ship and a Chinese fishing boat near Pratas Island (Dongsha Island, 東沙群島) in the South China Sea. The China Coast Guard vessel was 28 nautical miles (52km) northeast of Pratas at 6:15am on Thursday, approaching the island’s restricted waters, which extend 24 nautical miles from its shoreline, the CGA’s Dongsha-Nansha Branch said in a statement. The Tainan, a 2,000-tonne cutter, was deployed by the CGA to shadow the Chinese ship, which left the area at 2:39pm on Friday, the statement said. At 6:31pm on Friday,
The Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy’s (PLAN) third aircraft carrier, the Fujian, would pose a steep challenge to Taiwan’s ability to defend itself against a full-scale invasion, a defense expert said yesterday. Institute of National Defense and Security Research analyst Chieh Chung (揭仲) made the comment hours after the PLAN confirmed the carrier recently passed through the Taiwan Strait to conduct “scientific research tests and training missions” in the South China Sea. China has two carriers in operation — the Liaoning and the Shandong — with the Fujian undergoing sea trials. Although the PLAN needs time to train the Fujian’s air wing and
Taiwanese celebrities Hank Chen (陳漢典) and Lulu Huang (黃路梓茵) announced yesterday that they are planning to marry. Huang announced and posted photos of their engagement to her social media pages yesterday morning, joking that the pair were not just doing marketing for a new show, but “really getting married.” “We’ve decided to spend all of our future happy and hilarious moments together,” she wrote. The announcement, which was later confirmed by the talent agency they share, appeared to come as a surprise even to those around them, with veteran TV host Jacky Wu (吳宗憲) saying he was “totally taken aback” by the news. Huang,
The American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) put Taiwan in danger, Ma Ying-jeou Foundation director Hsiao Hsu-tsen (蕭旭岑) said yesterday, hours after the de facto US embassy said that Beijing had misinterpreted World War II-era documents to isolate Taiwan. The AIT’s comments harmed the Republic of China’s (ROC) national interests and contradicted a part of the “six assurances” stipulating that the US would not change its official position on Taiwan’s sovereignty, Hsiao said. The “six assurances,” which were given by then-US president Ronald Reagan to Taiwan in 1982, say that Washington would not set a date for ending arm sales to Taiwan, consult
RSS