Are Human Rights Still the Core Value of the DPP?

  Are Human Rights Still the Core Value of the DPP?

China Times (Taipei, Taiwan)

November 28, 2017

Translation of an Excerpt

The Cabinet version of a bill entitled "Information-Communications Security Management Act" is now under review at the Legislative Judiciary Committee. Various provisions of Article 18 of the bill carry unclear legislative concepts and fuzzy definitions, eliciting disputes over the expansion of government agencies in grave violation of human rights, even meeting serious attacks of using “the pretext of safeguarding national security to implement the Taiwan Garrison Command and the White Terror of the Internet.”

Article 18 of the bill states: "If the government, finding grave shortcomings when examining and vetting the maintenance of information-communications security, or when encountering vital incidents of information-communications security determines it is necessary, then it may dispatch personnel carrying identification papers for the exercise of official functions to enter non-government agency-localities for inspection and may order relevant personnel to make necessary explanations, supporting measures or provide relevant corroborative materials. With regard to the aforementioned inspection, the non-government agencies and their relevant personnel may not evade, obstruct or refuse without proper grounds.”

Examining the whole provision, which is filled with too much fuzzy authorization, indeterminate powers, unclear demarcations, would, we are afraid, create serious sequela, causing plenty of misgivings among the outside world. This bill, whose subsidiary legislation is not clear and whose parent legislation carries exceedingly fuzzy, crucial provisions, has elicited criticism even from Tsai Yi-yu, the DPP convener of the Legislative Judiciary and Laws Committee, saying that Article 18 reads like an "emperor clause." Using the provisions of a single clause to grant powers nearly without limits would, of course, arouse misgivings.

"Human rights" are the core value of the DPP. Faced with the controversy, shouldn’t Premier Lai withdraw and redraft the bill? Shouldn’t the Legislative Yuan draft provisions to stringently set down norms?

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