Taiwan Government’s Hypocricy In Freedom Of Expression Criticized

言論自由日座談
內政部在台大法學院國際會議廳主辦「台灣言論自由之發展與挑戰」座談。

Taiwan Church News
3398 Edition
10 – 16 April, 2017
Church News

Taiwan Government’s Hypocricy In Freedom Of Expression Criticized

Reported by Chiu Kuo-rong

As annual Apri 7 is declared by Taiwan government as Freedom of Expression Day since 2017, Taiwan’s Ministry of the Interior held a seminar, entitled as “The development and challenge of Taiwan’s freedom of expression”, inviting heavy-weight officials and senior journalists to share their thoughts at the law school of National Taiwan University on April 7.

Mrs Cheng Li-chun, minister of Ministry of Culture, straightforwardly criticized Taiwan legal system in front of Mr Yeh Jiunn-rong , Minister of the Interior, that too many laws and statues under the authoritarian KMT regimes were still kept intact in current legal codes, even though the notorious martial law had already been lifted three decades ago. In addition, the slow-pace or even stagnant juridical reform is especially an irony for the DPP congress and administration which were just elected about one year ago, remarked Mrs Cheng.

Mr Ho Rong-hsin, a senior journalist, also delivered his critiques about the hypocricy of the government’s pledge on freedom of expression via a recent example of Mr Shih Ming-te, former DPP chairman and a political dissident jailed for 25 years in prison by KMT, who applied to access government’s files to learn who were the informers under the era of martial law, but unfortunately got an official refusal by DPP administration, even though there existed an appropriate act called The Freedom of Government Information Law allowing people to access the public information.

Translated by Peter Wolfe

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