Amnesty International (Taiwan)
Since my arrival in Taiwan at the beginning of May, I have been heavily involved in Amnesty International's campaign to abolish the death penalty in the Asia Pacific region. One of the awareness events I was involved in planning was a conference titled "Victims, We Care!". I had the chance to host Renny Cushing (Founder and Director of MVFHR, Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights, in the United States) and Toshi Kazama (a Japanese photographer who spent 11 years photographing prisons and death chambers world wide), who gave moving accounts of their own experiences and their benevolent views towards those who have violent crimes committed against them. AI Taiwan is also working with other Taiwanese NGOs opposing the death penalty to support those who have been wrongfully convicted. The NGOs have been lobbying the government on behalf of these convicts, and providing these convicts legal assistance in their cases. The most notable is the Hsinchih Trio (Su Chien-Ho, Liu Bing-Lang, and Chuan Lin-Hsun) Case, where after 16 years, 11 trials, 3 Supreme Court judgments, and 3 extraordinary appeals to the Supreme Court by the prosecutor general, the three men were once again sentenced to death by the Superior Court on June 30, 2007 based almost entirely on their confessions allegedly obtained through police torture. The Taiwanese NGOs are hoping to bring this case to the forefront of international media attention, and I have been helping them with the relevant research on international legal standards and with translating many of the judgments/legal documents.
In addition to the death penalty campaign, I have also been working on the Comfort Women issue for Amnesty International. I helped to develop several media events to facilitate public awareness about the issue, the most memorable of which was assisting in the production of a video featuring the "Comfort Women" survivors in Taiwan. Along with a film-maker and other workers from AI and the Taipei Women's Rescue Foundation, I had the chance to travel to different parts of Taiwan to interview these ladies, many of whom are living in extreme poverty and failing health. It has been 62 years since the end of the WWII in the Asia Pacific region, and most of these ladies are in their late 70s or 80s. One of the ladies we visited to produce this documentary have since passed away. The resolution passed by the U.S. Congress, asking the Japanese government to formally acknowledge, apologize, and accept historical responsibility in a clear and unequivocal manner for its Imperial Armed Force's coercion of young women into sexual slavery, known to the world as "comfort women", during its colonial wartime occupation of Asia and the Pacific Islands from 1930s through the duration of World War II, is great news to activists who have been working so hard to lobby the Japanese government, which adamantly denies having forced these women into sexual slavery. This resolution is a big achievement in AI's phase 2 campaign of increasing international pressure on the Japanese government to apologize and compensate the victims. The next step for AI is to pressure the Japanese government to join the ICC and make the Japanese government responsible or their war crimes.
It has been a steep learning curve for me since starting this internship at AI Taiwan, especially the vast amount of experience I have gained learning how human rights activism functions at the front line. For example, I have learned how to utilize a variety of campaign strategies and using different communication approaches for a diverse range of audiences. The memories and the knowledge I have gained from this trip will last me a lifetime. Thank you IHRP for having given me the opportunity to go on this internship and work with one of the greatest human rights agencies worldwide.
