20100712 Protesting is a right, not a privilege

Protesting is a right, not a privilege

Monday, Jul 12, 2010, Page 8

Imagine for a second what Taiwan would be like today if the Wild Lily Student Movement of the 1990s had not occurred or if student activists had stayed at home rather than protest the absurdity of the First National Congress, elected in China in 1947 under then Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) administration, serving in perpetuity in Taiwan.

Imagine what would happen if the democratic developments over the last two decades were undermined or the government attempted to turn back the clock. Most of us have a hard time envisioning this because such a scenario seems palpably absurd in a democracy.

Taiwan’s democracy would not be the same if these students had not voiced their discontent and protested against what they considered to be unreasonable two decades ago.

This is why National Kaohsiung Normal University’s recent decision to ban its students from taking part in rallies or parades and to require that faculty seek the school’s consent before making public statements was both ridiculous and alarming in equal measure.

The move is incomprehensible for various reasons, the most obvious being that it violates Article 14 of the Constitution, which grants people freedom to assemble.

The Council of Grand Justices’ Constitutional Interpretation No 445 defines this freedom as one of “the most important basic human rights in a democracy,” along with freedom of speech and the right to education.

The Constitution stipulates that the government cannot limit people’s freedom to assemble, unless it is believed that an event will infringe upon the freedoms of others, disturb social order or harm public well-being.

Although the University Act (大學法) entitles universities to write their own regulations governing student discipline, it does not give them the right to infringe their students’ basic human rights.

What compounds this absurdity is that the ban was proposed and passed by the university — one of the nation’s major “cradles” for junior and senior-high school teachers — partly because the school was following precedents set by two schools of similar nature and importance — National Taiwan Normal University and National Changhua University of Education.

It is unclear when these other schools wrote the ban into their student discipline regulations, but Taiwan Normal has revised its regulations on at least three occasions since January 2005, while Changhua has made four revisions since October 2002, but the article still remains.

Moreover, the University Act requires universities to submit a copy of their student discipline regulations to the Ministry of Education after each revision. The ministry has known about the article the whole time, but never felt the ban was problematic until recently.

This might be considered a minor oversight if it weren’t for the fact that the ministry set up a human rights education committee in April 2001, and sponsored a nationwide human rights awareness project. at schools between 2005 and 2008. It looks like some school officials must have skipped class.