#MeToo movement

Abuse claims rock Taiwan government

Taiwan’s ruling party has been rocked by a wave of sexual harassment allegations, as the country grapples with a #MeToo movement that has encompassed politics and the media.

On Tuesday, President Tsai Ingwen apologised for the second time in a week in response to sexual harassment claims against senior staff in the Democratic Progressive party (DPP). “Our society as a whole must educate ourselves again. People in sexual harassment incidents are victims,” she wrote in a Facebook post.

Hours earlier, Tsai’s national policy adviser Yan Chih-fa resigned after being accused of sexually harassing an employee of a Tsai support group in 2018. Yan, who denies the allegations, also withdrew a defamation lawsuit he had filed against the complainant.

Beyond politics, on Wednesday Lee Yuan-chun, a former political worker, filed a lawsuit against Wang Dan, a former student leader in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, accusing him of attempted rape in 2014. The exiled Chinese dissident denied the allegations and said he had returned to Taiwan to cooperate with legal proceedings. He told the Guardian he welcomed the lawsuit because “seeking the truth through legal means is a more rigorous approach than engaging in online speculations”.

In the past week there have been nearly two dozen allegations of sexual harassment against high-profile political figures. Several people have already resigned.

The latest instalment in Taiwan’s previously limited #MeToo movement was sparked by a Facebook post written on 31 May by a former DPP staffer, who said she had been sexually harassed by a director after a video shoot. Chen Qian-rou said she complained to the then head of the party’s women’s development department, Xu Jia-tian, who allegedly dismissed the issue and blamed her for not avoiding the director. Xu resigned after the post went viral.

The DPP faces a close presidential race in January. There have been allegations that the accusers are agents of the Chinese Communist party (CCP), who would like to see Taiwan’s ruling party ousted by the Kuomintang (KMT) opposition party, which advocates closer ties with Beijing.

According to one poll, online support for the DPP fell by more than a third after Chen’s Facebook post.

But the KMT has also been hit by allegations. On Saturday, Fu Kun-chi, a KMT legislator, was accused of sexually assaulting a journalist in 2014, kissing her without her consent at a work dinner. Fu responded by saying he had never used his power to subordinate women.

Tsai, Taiwan’s first female president, has championed the selfgoverning island as a beacon of social equality. But the #MeToo reckoning has exposed the patriarchal norms that still govern Taiwanese society.

Prof Chen Mei-hua of the sociology department at National Sun Yat-sen University noted that in formal legal proceedings the accusations were unlikely to succeed. “Most cases happened many years ago, and most women do not have any evidence,” she said. “It is almost impossible for victims to win the lawsuit.”

‘[We] must educate ourselves … People in sexual harassment incidents are victims’

Tsai Ing-wen

President of Taiwan