Both covenants were ratified in 2009, and the deadline to fix anything inconsistent with them was 2011. Now here we are in 2017, and…
Poor wording in the covenants’ enabling act and narrow Judicial Yuan interpretation have hampered implementation by making courts unwilling to strike down conflicting laws, she said, calling for amendments to improve the enabling act, along with the establishment of a national human rights commission.
Apparently people aren’t satisfied with the Control Yuan’s Committee on Human Rights Protection.
In one recent death penalty case, “the Council of Grand Justices called the covenants a ‘product of the West,’ implying that as an Eastern culture we do not have to care about the values embedded in these international treaties,” said Leon Huang (黃致豪), a human-rights lawyer affiliated with the Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty.
“Asian values” strike again!