COR Point 74 Freedom of Expression (ICCPR Article 20)
Since the fifth Legislative Yuan took office in early in 2004 to the present, lawmakers have off and on discussed the enactment of ethnic equality or other similar laws. In 2009, the “Fan Lan-chin” Incident sparked an especially intense debate about ethnic equality laws. At that time, lawmakers from various political parties put forward nine different bills, most of which were directed against the dissemination of hate speech.
Since the seating of the ninth Legislative Yuan in February 2016, several lawmakers have separately submitted or announced intentions to draft anti-discrimination laws, including the prohibition of discrimination on grounds of race or ethnicity, status of immigrants, gender identity or mental or physical handicaps. A draft “ethnic equality act” was approved for its first reading by the Legislature’s Interior Affairs Committee on July 13, 2016.139
- “Fan Lan-chin” was a pseudonym of Kuo Kuan-ying, a former journalist and official in the former Government Information Office who had also served as the information section chief for the Taipei Economic and Culture Office in Toronto, Canada. Kuo had published numerous commentaries on the “Fan Lan-chin” blog which were widely seen as having denigrated native Taiwanese, expressed hatred to Japan, incited divisions between ethnic groups, notably between immigrants from mainland China who came to Taiwan with the KMT forces under Chiang Kai-shek in 1949-1950, and expressed support for the “White Terror” imposed by the KMT martial law regime. In March 2009, the GIO suspended Kuo from his post and he later resigned from the agency. See Maubo Chang, “GIO suspends controversial official from Toronto post,” China Post, March 23, 2009.
- See Tseng Ying-yu, “Anti-Discrimination: Legislature Gives First Reading for Ethnic Equality Draft Bill,” Apple Daily Taiwan (in Chinese), July 13, 2016. See also Hsieh Ting-fan, “Anti-discrimination draft review adjourned again,” Taipei Times, July 1, 2016.