August 21-27
China
The UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities concluded its review of the combined second and third periodic reports of mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macao. China signed the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) in 2007 and ratified it in 2008. Committee experts asked China about government measures to integrate children with disabilities into mainstream schools, to end institutionalization, and to ensure that persons with disabilities can lead independent lives, among other issues. One expert encouraged the government to have open and transparent communications and collaboration with civil society. The committee will issue its concluding observations within the next few weeks.
The General Office of the State Council is establishing an inter-ministerial commission to promote births. The new commission is comprised of representatives of 26 government and Communist Party entities and mass organizations, including the CCP Youth League, the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, and the All-China Women’s Federation. Its mission is to study and formulate pro-natalist policies. Vice Premier Sun Chunlan will convene the commission.
The National Development and Reform Commission, National Bureau of Statistics, and Ministry of Ecology and Environment have issued a plan for establishing a unified, standardized carbon emissions statistical accounting system. According to the plan, the statistical accounting of carbon emissions in various industries will be carried out steadily by 2023, and a standardized statistical accounting system will be established.
The Ministry of Finance announced that subsidies given to legal aid personnel in accordance with the PRC Legal Aid Law are exempt from value-added tax and personal income tax. Legal aid service providers working at mass organizations pursuant to Article 68 of the Legal Aid Law are also covered by the preferential tax policies.
Hong Kong
Six members of a pro-independence student group, Returning Valiant, pleaded guilty to charges of subverting the state under the 2020 National Security Law. The six were accused of conspiring with others between January and May 2021 to organize or participate in overthrowing or undermining the mainland Chinese and Hong Kong governments. The accused were 15 to 25 at the time of their arrest. Meanwhile, 11 other persons were convicted in district court of rioting outside the central government offices in Admiralty on September 29, 2019. The defendants were apprehended in the area but denied participating in the protest, which turned violent. They have not yet been sentenced.
The former chairman of the now-disbanded Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, Albert Ho, was released on bail while awaiting trial on National Security Law charge of inciting subversion. Ho, 70, a human rights lawyer, is reportedly in bad health. He had been in detention since May 2021, serving jail sentences for helping to organize a pro-democracy march on Oct. 1, 2019.
Japan
A Japanese court refused to recognize a trans woman as the legal parent of her biological child because the child was born after the woman had legally changed her gender to female. The woman had two children with her female partner using preserved sperm, one born before her surgical and legal transition and one born after. The court agreed that she is the legal parent of the first-born child but not the second. The plaintiff was assigned male gender at birth and changed her sex in her official family register four years ago.
Koreas
South Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission found the country’s past military governments responsible for atrocities committed at the Brothers Home in Busan, a state-funded “vagrants’ facility” where thousands of people were detained without judicial process from the 1960s to 1980s. Responding to urban beautification campaigns ordered by the military dictatorship, police snatched people they deemed vagrants off the streets and forced them into slave labor. They were beaten and raped and held in dismal conditions. The commission said at least 657 peopled died. It urged the government to apologize to survivors, investigate conditions at current welfare facilities, and ratify the UN convention against forced disappearances.
A South Korean conscientious objector is being tried for refusing to perform alternative service to military duty. Hye-min Kim, a member of the Jehovah’s Witnesses whose religious beliefs preclude him from doing military service, is the first person known to have refused “alternative service” since it was introduced in 2020. Following rulings by Supreme Court and Constitutional Court in 2018, the government now allows conscientious objectors to work inside a correctional facility. But the system has been criticized as punitive because the term of service is 36 months, double the typical period of military service.
Taiwan
The Cabinet urged legislators to move quickly to relax rules governing police use of weapons after two police officers were killed while on duty in southern Taiwan. The Executive Yuan approved an amendment to the Act Governing the Use of Police Weapons in 2020 but it requires legislative approval. The amendment would expand the situations in which police are allowed to use weapons, and introduce investigative and compensation mechanisms for use if police damage property or harm persons.