Workers protest against record unemployment
　

STABILITY: Thousands joined the rally calling on the government to create long-term rather than seasonal jobs to stem rising unemployment

By Loa Iok-sin
STAFF REPORTER
Saturday, May 02, 2009, Page 1
　

Workers protesting against the nation's record-high unemployment clashed with police who tried to stop them from entering the offices of the Executive Yuan to submit their petition yesterday.

Thousands of protesters had gathered on Liberty Square in Taipei — the departure point for the May Day parade — hours before the march was scheduled to begin.

“Workers across the country, stand up bravely;” “Solidarity for workers,” the crowd shouted as they waved banners, chanted slogans and sang on the square.

The protesters blasted the government of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) for failing to improve the economy and curb growing unemployment.

“We demand that the government do something about the record-high unemployment rate, but they [officials] only came up with some ridiculous and useless policies,” Mao Chen-fei (毛振飛), chairman of the Taoyuan Confederation of Trade Unions and leader of the protest, told the crowd. “We want long-term stable jobs.”

Government statistics showed that unemployment hit 5.81 percent in March. While the government has created many job opportunities, most of them are short-term or seasonal jobs.

Yesterday's demonstration started out peacefully, but a clash broke out when police stopped the marchers about 100m from the Executive Yuan.

Undaunted, the protesters tried to push past and break the police line.

Although they could not get to the Executive Yuan, Minister without Portfolio James Hsueh (薛承泰) and Council of Labor Affairs Minister Jennifer Wang (王如玄) later came out to talk to the demonstrators.

Hsueh promised that he would call a meeting of businesses, government officials and workers to discuss the jobs issue.

However, as soon as Wang took the podium, the crowd began chanting, demanding her resignation. Unable to speak, Wang stepped down from the podium.

“Banks have been hit hard by the economic recession,” said Lin Wan-fu (林萬福), a Taiwan Business Bank employee and vice chairman of the National Federation of Bank Employee Unions. “The situation is especially bad for private banks: About 5 to 10 percent of employees at each bank are laid off a year.”

While layoffs are not as common at state-run banks, they have stopped hiring new staff.

“Take Taiwan Business Bank for example, we used to hire 100 to 200 new employees per year, but we don't have any plan to hire new people this year,” Lin said.

Taiwan Petroleum Workers' Union chairman Wang Ming-huei (王明輝), who works for CPC Corp, Taiwan, panned the government for creating a gap between workers in the private and public sectors.

“The government tries to reduce welfare for workers at government-run businesses, but what it should do is try to raise labor standards instead of bring ours [state-run workers] down so that everybody is equal,” Wang said.

Afraid they would not be able to find a job after graduation, dozens of college students also joined the parade for the first time.

The parade continued on to the Ketagalan Boulevard in front of the Presidential Office, where a rally was held.

Dissatisfied with the government's response, Mao said that labor unions may consider blocking the freeway leading to Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport on the day Ma is scheduled to visit the nation's diplomatic allies.

Ma met a group of exemplary workers and their families at the Presidential Office yesterday, lauding their contributions and promising to focus his efforts on stemming the rise in unemployment.

The Cabinet has created more than 40,000 jobs to help improve people's livelihoods, Ma said.

Although the government cannot expect workers to do everything it wanted, “I think it's reasonable for [workers and the government] to cooperate with each other while keeping each other's demands in mind,” he said.

Ma said he believed Taiwanese workers are wise and should be able to solve any conflict without confrontation.

Treaty of Taipei had no claim to sovereignty
　

By Huang Chi-yao 黃啟堯
Saturday, May 02, 2009, Page 8

The Treaty of Taipei is a pact between Japan and countries that are not signatories to the San Francisco Peace Treaty (SFPT). Article 26 states: “Should Japan make a peace settlement or war claims settlement with any State granting that State greater advantages than those provided by the present Treaty, those same advantages shall be extended to the parties to the present Treaty.”

Article 10 of the Treaty of Taipei states that “nationals of the Republic of China [ROC] shall be deemed to include all the inhabitants and former inhabitants of Taiwan.” This is a definition of terms, not a decision on sovereignty.

Taiwanese were forced to adopt ROC citizenship in 1946, but the Fourth Geneva Convention states that occupation transfers administrative rights, but not sovereignty, “quasi-sovereignty” or national title.

The SFPT could not include a decision on territory conflicting with basic principles of international law. Based on the principle of self-determination, Japan’s renouncement of Taiwan and Penghu transferred that territory to Taiwan.

China’s interests are stipulated in Article 10 of the SFPT and Article 5 of the Treaty of Taipei. Treaties invalidated following the war did not include the Treaty of Shimonoseki, which was not signed by the ROC.

Article 42 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties states that a treaty can only be terminated by applying treaty provisions or the Vienna Convention. Article 43 states that a treaty losing validity does not impair the duty of a state to fulfill treaty obligations to which it would be subject under international law independently of the treaty. This shows that the Treaty of Shimonoseki is customary law.

Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) accepted Japan’s surrender in Taiwan as the representative of the allied powers. But Taiwan was not uninhabited, therefore a claim of first occupation was never possible. Furthermore, with violent rule there is no peaceful occupation, thus a claim to the acquisition of sovereignty after a certain amount of time could not be valid. International law does not recognize occupation of territories by the use of force, which is precisely why Japan renounced Taiwan.

In The Creation of States, James Crawford, a professor at the University of Cambridge, writes that although Taiwan has the prerequisites to be recognized as a state, it has not been recognized because it has not declared itself an independent nation, separate from China.

This means that although Taipei may have proposed the “special state-to-state” and the “one country on either side [of the Taiwan Strait]” models and has repeated the old “one China” policy, Taiwan is not, and does not belong to, the ROC.

Japan’s leading authority on international law and a former judge with the International Court of Justice, Shigeru Oda, says the “special state-to-state” and “one country on either side” models only explain Taiwan’s relations with the People’s Republic of China, not with the ROC.

He suggests that there are “two Chinas and one Taiwan,” with Kinmen and Matsu being ROC territory, while Taiwan and Penghu belong to Taiwan.

German academic and International Court of Justice judge Simma Bruno says the ROC exercises sovereignty over foreign territory.

In a book on international law, Taiwanese international law expert Chiu Hung-dah (丘宏達) quotes former US secretary of state John Foster Dulles as saying the legal status of Taiwan and Penghu differs from the outlying islands of Kinmen and Matsu and that the Treaty of Taipei did not return Taiwan to China.

All of this is evidence that the Treaty of Taipei did not transfer sovereignty over Taiwan.

Huang Chi-yao is a visiting researcher at the Max Planck Institute.