Human Rights Protection

    The utmost mission of a lawyer is to protect human rights and realize social justice. Therefore, the TBA has created a Human Rights Protection Committee, charged with protection of basic human rights and realization of the concept of justice, assisting underprivileged groups and disclosing social injustice, and promoting the concept of human rights and upgrading the image of lawyers. In addition to the Human Rights Protection Committee, other committees of TBA such as the Judicial Reform Committee, the Constitutional Law Committee, the Public Legal Services Committee, and the Women? Issues Research Committee have arranged many activities in connection with human rights protection and promotion.

     During the process of constitutional amendment, the TBA held a symposium “ow to Supplement Rules of Human Right Protection and How to Reform the Judicial System.”This meeting recommended that the articles enumerating basic human rights in the Constitution should be expanded in order to strengthen and expand the basic system of human right protection.

     In connection with people personal freedom and the legal criminal procedure, TBA called for immediate termination of structural infringements on human rights. Chief among the reforms demanded was the abolition of the so-called ‘oodlum Law,”which allowed the use of secret witnesses. Under pressure from the TBA and other organizations, the law finally passed into history in 1997. In addition, the TBA actively supported returning the power to authorize detentions from the prosecutors to the courts (this change was in 1997 with amendments to the Criminal Procedure Code, which took effect in 1999). The TBA appealed to the Ministry of Justice (MOJ) to draft criteria for handling criminal cases by judicial and police authorities with a view to protecting a suspect right to an adequate defense. In 1998, TBA held press conferences and public hearings concerning the procedure for conducting executions in death penalty cases, successfully convincing the MOJ to enact the “rocedural Standards for the Conduct of Executions, ”rendering the process more clear and fair.

     Concerning protection of freedom of speech and freedom of the press, the TBA has spoken out on particular cases (such as raids on underground radio stations and the sedition case against W.C. Liao et al.,) to call for respect for people freedom of speech and the right to know. The TBA also requested that people?speech should not constitute an offense under Article 100 of the Criminal Code and that the Law Governing Broadcasting and Television should be amended to break the government monopoly over the electronic media (these reforms were realized in 1992 and 1993 respectively).