| dc.description.abstract | The purpose of this thesis is to review the process of amending sex trade policy in Taiwan between 2009-2011 and explores about two critical turns:
1.Since 1973, the government in Taiwan took on the approach of gradual abolishment of prostitution, then why The Constitutional Court announced the J.Y. Interpretation No. 666 in Nov 2009 had ruled that it is unconstitutional to punish sex workers but not their clients in Article 80 of Social Order Maintenance Act, which opened up the door of amendments to the law? How did this opportunity happen?
The researcher thinks the key reason why Grand Justices ruled this Article unconstitutional was because Liu Chao-shiuan(劉兆玄), the Premier of Executive Yuan, had made a declaration of “amending the law toward decriminalization” in Jun 2009. However, this declaration was not a spontaneous self-review from the administrative system but the stress from the society. The abolishment of Licensed Prostitution in 1997 had led to the suicide of Guan Siou-chin(官秀琴) in 2006, the head of Taipei Alliance of Licensed Prostitutes(公娼自救會). Sex workers group, Collective of Sex Workers And Supporters (COSWAS), initiated series of social activism for Guan, and these also led to the lawyer, Wang Ju-hsuan(王如玄) as a NGO committee member in The Human Rights Protection and Promotion Committee of Executive Yuan(行政院人權保障推動小組) proposing to abolish the Article 80 in Social Order Maintenance Act. This proposition had undergone strong opposition by the Minister of the Interior in Chen Shui-bian’s(陳水扁) term and in Ma Ying-jeou’s(馬英九) term, the Minister of the Interior also postponed the agenda of amending the law. It was not until Jun 2009 that Liu Chao-shiuan made the declaration of decriminalization. The reason why Premier Liu made this declaration was related to the social supports due to the 12-year efforts of sex worker movement, as well as the tension and opportunity brought about by the presidential political power shift in 2008, when Chen Shui-bian handed over the power to the succeeding Ma Ying-jeou. J.Y. Interpretation No. 666 only ruled the Article 80 that punishes sex workers but not their clients unconstitutional due to “the principle of equality” without touching on the “rights to work”, had left a highly-flexible room for administrative sectors. This initiative of amending the law was not led by the sex worker group, COSWAS didn’t file a petition for constitutional interpretation then because of the power of organizing sex workers being weak for two reasons: first, sex workers’ interests were differentiated by the degree of law enforcement due to different types in sex industry. Second, the criminalization and stigmatization also make it even harder for the bottommost street sex workers to speak out. Furthermore, the social discussion around the issue is yet to be deepened, therefore COSWAS thought the timing of amending the law was still immature.
2. Why Premier Liu’s declaration of “amending the law toward decriminalization” in 2009, took a U-turn in 2011 resulting in “both sex workers and clients are punishable by law universally only if local government sets up designated area for sex trade can be exempted” (so-called extraterritoriality)? What crucial turns happened in this 2-year period that had impacted on the results of the new amendment?
This thesis concludes three key points: (1) The Minister of the Interior, Jiang Yi-huah(江宜樺), proposed “permission of self-employed and small cooperatives for sex workers, using negative listing instead of setting up red-light district” in Oct 2010, which is a relatively practical policy. However, this proposition triggered strong oppositions from same party (KMT) legislators Wu Yu-sheng(吳育昇), Ding Shou-zhong(丁守中) and DDP’s Huang Sue-ying(黃淑英). Moreover, in the policy planning stage, the government didn’t guide the public to know the evaluation of different approaches, and thus, failed to gain more support from the public as backing. It was during the heat of local election and with the upcoming of presidential election in the next year, and thus, the government took conservative strategy to deal with the pressure. (2) What matters most, for central government, most local governments were unwilling to assume the responsibilities of communicating with the public about the planning of the location where sex trade can be legal, and central government just trimmed their sail depending on political concern instead of carrying through the stance on decriminalization. Therefore, even though there were 80% of the public in favor of “conditional decriminalization and setting up designated area”, the policy eventually backing down to the form of extraterritoriality that had never been implemented until now, which was totally departed from the original stance on decriminalization. (3) Not only the KMT in power played it safe, but also the opposition party DDP. DDP took “criminalizing clients” as their policy, sidestepping the responsibilities that local government should designate legal sex trade area. Both of them co-constructed and perpetuated the rotten political culture that in the face of election, only ballots count and legalization of sex trade was undoubtedly off the table.
In addition to the above-mentioned political reasons, for COSWAS, as a sex worker NGO, because the power of organizing was insufficient to struggle for an amendment plan that would benefit the living of the bottommost street sex workers and empower their autonomy to fight, COSWAS choose to extend the battle to deepen the organizing of sex workers. With the stance that bottom sex workers who work illegally should be legalized directly, COSWAS advocates to establish communication platforms with the community through running political campaigns in historical red-light district.
The research concludes in the process of amending the sex trade law, the most controversial issue is the “location” which challenges how people can treat sex industry with normalized attitudes. The potential conflicts about people and sex trade, such as marriage, education, security and property price, etc., are not unsolvable, because sex industry in various forms is already existing in our lives. However, instead of facilitating the communication between the public and sex industry, the hypocritical local government and legislators incited moral panic of sex to dodge the responsibility of the legalization of sex trade. Reforms shouldn’t be depended upon government’s temporary goodwill, we must develop a political power of left-wing people outside the traditional major two right-wing parties.
| en_US |