20100313 Report presents mixed picture of rights in Taiwan

Report presents mixed picture of rights in Taiwan

SHAME: Many marriages in Taiwan involve foreign-born spouses, who are often the targets of discrimination, a US State Department report said

By William Lowther
STAFF REPORTER
Saturday, Mar 13, 2010, Page 1

Taiwan continues to suffer from corruption, violence and discrimination against women, trafficking in persons and abuse of foreign workers, the US State Department’s annual report on human rights said.

Despite these criticisms, Taiwan “generally respected the human rights of its citizens,” said the report, released on Thursday.

The report — more than 2 million words dealing with 194 different countries — is believed to be the most exhaustive document on human rights in the world.

Eleven pages of the report were devoted to Taiwan.

“Police corruption, while limited, was a problem,” it said.

Apart from detailing a few actual cases, the report provided little evidence to support its charges of corruption. It cited the trial of former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and his wife.

The report maintained that violence against women, including rape and domestic violence, remained a serious problem in Taiwan.

It said the Ministry of the Interior estimated that the total number of sexual assaults was 10 times the number reported to police. Social pressure not to disgrace families discouraged abused women from reporting incidents to the police, the report said.

Women’s groups complain that despite the law and increased awareness of the issue, judicial authorities remained dismissive of sexual harassment in the workplace, the report said.

“Women’s advocates noted that women continued to be promoted less frequently, occupied fewer management positions and worked for lower pay than their male counterparts.

According to the Council for Labor Affairs, salaries for women averaged 82 percent of those for men performing comparable jobs,” it said.

The report said that child abuse continued to be a widespread problem, with the estimated number of victims reaching 20,000 per year, while only 3,000 cases were reported.

Authorities have cracked down on trafficking in people, but the report said Taiwan remained a destination for Southeast Asian and Chinese nationals trafficked into forced labor or sexual exploitation, and there were reports of women being trafficked from Taiwan to Japan for sex.

Some women smuggled into Taiwan to seek illegal work were forced into the commercial sex industry, the report said, but there had been a significant decrease in the number of children forced into prostitution.

Ten percent of marriages in Taiwan involved a foreign-born spouse — mostly women from China, Vietnam, Indonesia and Thailand — and these wives were often targets of discrimination, both inside and outside the home, it said.

In response, Executive Yuan spokesman Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) said yesterday that the government treats any review of Taiwan’s human rights issues with an open mind and takes seriously all the information presented in the report because it provides valuable insight on governance.

The report provided government agencies with valid reference points for formulating policies, he said.

Chiang said the government would also continue to communicate with and explain the situation to the international community if any findings differ from the facts.

The government is confident it will get better results in future reviews, Chiang said.

Meanwhile, China accused Washington of hypocrisy yesterday for its criticism of Beijing’s restrictions on the Internet and dissent, blaming the US for the financial crisis and saying its own rights record was terrible.

The US State Department annual report criticized China, along with Cuba, Myanmar, North Korea and Russia.

China’s State Council Information Office, or Cabinet spokesman’s office, issued its own annual assessment of the US’ human rights record in response, and this year it dwelt on the US’ economic woes.

“The United States not only has a terrible domestic human rights record, it is also the main source of many human rights disasters worldwide,” the Chinese report said, Xinhua news agency reported.

“Especially [at] a time when the world is suffering serious human rights disasters caused by the global financial crisis sparked by the US sub-prime crisis, the US government has ignored its own grave human rights problems and reveled in accusing other countries,” it said.

China’s Foreign Ministry, in a separate statement, also condemned US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi for comments earlier this week honoring “the many brave Tibetans who have sacrificed their lives fighting for freedom.”

Additional reporting by Shih Hsiu-chuan and reuters, beijing