Human Rights in Taiwan: Is the Battle Won?

Human Rights in Taiwan: Is the Battle Won?

By Brian Kennedy

Taipei Times, Jan. 4, 2000

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere," said the late
US civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.

Traditionally, New Year's is a time to look back over the past year and
look forward to the coming year; to take stock of where we stand. The
execution of eight death row inmates in one day a couple of months ago
raises the issue of what is the state of human rights and civil
liberties here in Taiwan.

The Taiwanese public has become quite blase towards the issue of human
rights. The public consensus is that the "bad old days" of martial law
and all that it brought are over. The public seems to think that Taiwan
has got past the stage where there were serious and widespread human
rights abuses; death squads, torture, kangaroo court trials, the Taiwan
Garrison Command and all of that.

This public idea certainly has been fostered by the government.
President Lee Teng-hui calls himself "Mr Democracy" and his party, the
KMT, self-congratulates itself on the "new and progressive" Taiwan.

Prominent government officials of all parties talk of the strides
forward which have been made in the area of human rights and civil
liberties. The media joins in the chorus and the public accepts it.

It is certainly true that the human rights situation here in Taiwan has
improved markedly over the past 10 to 15 years. There are no more
prisoners of conscience, no more extra-judicial killings, the civil
liberties of freedom of the press and freedom of assemblage are, by and
large, respected. These are all positive developments.

However, to say the situation has improved greatly says more about
where Taiwan was 15 years ago than it does about where the nation is
today. It is easy to say things have improved when the relatively
recent past history includes such things as the 2-28 massacres, the
White Terror and literally hundreds of prisoners of conscience.

Undue complacency, undue self-congratulation, is not warranted
regarding Taiwan's human rights or civil liberties situation. The
public has accepted three ideas that are in fact completely false and
which serve to fundamentally weaken the human rights situation here.

First is the idea that human rights progress is historically a "one way
street." The idea that Taiwan could not return to the terrors of the
past is wrong. The fact that the 2-28 massacres and the White Terror
lie in the past does not preclude them from occurring again.

There is a common proverb that says history repeats itself. Any
historian of human rights could cite many examples of nations that made
considerable progress in human rights turning back, often with
frightening quickness, into periods of oppression and terror.

This is particularly true in nations where the concept of human rights
and civil liberties is not deeply rooted; which is exactly the
situation we have here in Taiwan.
Human rights education is practically nonexistent; the educational
system is not geared to instilling in Taiwanese children a sense of
their individual dignity and rights. The scant attention which is paid
to human rights in the school program always is set against a backdrop
of "obey your government, fulfill your responsibilities." This
essentially undermines the basic concept of human rights, which is that
each individual has certain inalienable rights regardless of what the
government says or does.

Human rights awareness, what might be termed a "human rights
mentality," has very shallow roots here in Taiwan. That fact makes it
far easier to turn back the clock. Human rights progress is not a one
way street. The public needs to understand this fact.

Second is the idea that there are no more human rights violations
occurring here in Taiwan. That too, is a completely false idea. Most of
the nations of the world consider the death penalty the gravest human
rights violation of all. Most nations of the world have renounced the
use of the death penalty. Taiwan executed 10 people in a one-week
period, eight of them in one day. The mere presence of the death
penalty in Taiwan is a grave human rights abuse.

Police torture also remains a serious and endemic problem. Human rights
abuses, including deaths, continue in the military. Conscientious
objectors to military service are imprisoned. The fundamental rights of
women, although protected by law, are routinely ignored in practice. To
say that Taiwan has no more human rights abuses ignores the reality of
the situation.

Third is the idea that there are two kinds of people: "good people and
bad people." This idea is quite common throughout the world, even in
countries that have a long history of human rights and civil liberties
such as the US. How this thinking works is thus: when a member of the
public hears of a suspect being tortured by the police, the member of
the public thinks "well the suspect is a bad person, he deserved it;
since I am a good person the police would never torture me".

The reality the public needs to understand is that the world is not, in
fact, divided up into "good people and bad people."

The late US President John F. Kennedy said it best: "The rights of all
men are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened." If the
human rights of all people are not respected, then in reality no one
has human rights.

In reality, the state of human rights and civil liberties here in
Taiwan is not good. What civil liberties we have rest on very weak
foundations. Serious human rights abuses occur on a daily basis here
and the public has a very apathetic attitude towards that fact. Taiwan
has come a long way, but it still has far to go.



Brian Kennedy is a member of the boards of Amnesty International Taiwan
and the Taiwan Association for Human Rights.