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UN needs to hear Pingpu Aborigines’
complaint
By Chen Yi-nan 陳逸南
Sunday, Jul 18, 2010, Page 8
‘For more than 60 years, Taiwan has been occupied and ruled by a foreign
regime.’
Representatives of Taiwan’s Pingpu Aborigines have filed a complaint against
President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration with the UN Human Rights Council
and they might now be given an opportunity to speak at the associated UN
meeting. Given the plethora of human rights-related activities in the UN, these
developments deserve our attention.
The UN system consists of more than 40 organizations that all deal with human
rights issues. The first type of organization are the human rights groups based
on the UN Charter and they are divided into general human rights monitoring
organizations and specialized human rights organizations.
The former includes the UN General Assembly, the UN Security Council, the UN
Economic and Social Council, the International Court of Justice and the UN
Secretariat. The latter includes the UN Human Rights Council, which replaced the
Commission on Human Rights a few years ago, the Sub-Commission on the Promotion
and Protection of Human Rights, the UN Commission on the Status of Women, the
Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Center for Human Rights
under the Secretariat.
This last group was established based on international human rights conventions,
such as the UN Human Rights Committee, which was set up according to the
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights that came into effect in
1976, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, which was set
up based on the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Racial Discrimination that became effective in 1969, the Committee on the
Elimination of Discrimination against Women, the Committee Against Torture; and
the Committee on the Rights of the Child, as well as a group of three people who
monitor the implementation of the International Convention on the Suppression
and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid.
At the moment, development, security and human rights are seen as the three main
pillars of the UN system, with the elevated status of human rights requiring
more prestigious UN human rights organizations and mechanisms. The General
Assembly thus passed Resolution 60/251 to create the Human Rights Council on
March 15, 2006. As an affiliate to the General Assembly, its status, authority,
participants and rules are all regulated. The resolution repeatedly reaffirms
that the work of the Human Rights Council must follow the principles of
universality, objectivity, transparency, fairness and genuine dialogue.
For more than 60 years, Taiwan has been occupied and ruled by a foreign regime.
China has used oppression and deceit to constantly destroy the Taiwanese
national identity and turned them into orphans in the international community.
Because the UN still has not handled the issue of Taiwan’s legal status, in flux
since the end of World War II, it remains unresolved to this day. The UN has
also shown precious little concern for the human rights of the people who reside
here. Hopefully, the complaint filed by the Pingpu Aborigines will be given fair
and just treatment by the UN.
Chen Yi-nan is a member of the Northern Taiwan Society.
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