Taiwan Today

Premier Liu Chao-shiuan at a meeting of the Human Rights Protection and Promotion Commission June 24 determined that sexual transactions will be decriminalized. The premier, in response to sex workers’ demands for human rights, directed that the old fining of prostitutes be changed, in principle decriminalizing prostitution. He called on the Ministry of the Interior to draw up regulatory laws by the end of 2009. As to whether special prostitution districts should be established once the regulatory laws are in place, Liu opposes using referendums to decide. Instead, county governments and local councils should decide. The Executive Yuan pointed out in related news that the MOI continues not to count arrests of prostitutes in police performance evaluations. Prior to changes in the law, the police will not actively punish violators. The human rights commission in its meeting June 24 discussed whether a subsection in Article 80 of the Social Order Maintenance Act should be abolished. This subsection requires the detention or fining of people engaging in sex for profit. Jiang Yi-huah, minister of the Research, Development and Evaluation Commission, said that the meeting made important changes in laws governing prostitution. In the past, prostitutes but not their customers were fined, but in 2007 the human rights commission called the government’s attention to the issue of respect for the rights of sex workers. At the meeting’s end Liu directed the committee to work in the direction of decriminalizing prostitution. Jiang explained that the purpose of the human rights commission is to handle human rights issues, so the establishment of special prostitution districts (red light districts) is a technical matter to be settled through new regulatory laws. The premier directed the MOI to draw up laws and related measures to regulate sex workers within six months, and then to repeal the current law. He also suggested that the Judicial Yuan notify local courts to consider fining violators of the current law, rather than detaining them. A report the RDEC prepared for the MOI, drawing on the conclusions of a Consensus Conference, had already concluded that, as long as no laws are violated, sexual transactions between consenting adults are personal sexual behavior. For this reason, prostitution should be considered like other occupations, and the choice to be a sexual worker falls within the right to make occupational choices. Important points made by the Consensus Conference are that adults must take responsibility for their own behavior, and that sexual morals should be governed by personal, educational and religious considerations, not by legal enforcement. The Consensus Conference said that prostitutes, johns, and third parties to the sexual transaction should not be punished, because to punish any one of them only forces sexual transactions underground, causing low-level sex workers to suffer even more oppressive treatment. The government should adopt passive regulation of the sex trade, it said, treating it like any other occupation. Sex workers should also be eligible for labor insurance and receive regular health examinations. At the same time, education should be used to reduce negative public impressions of the sex industry. (THN)