The KMT is looking to put judicial caning — a punishment practiced in roughly 16 countries and classified by the UN as cruel and degrading — to a public vote in Taiwan, potentially alongside the year-end local elections.

KMT Legislator Hung Meng-kai (洪孟楷) will lead a proposal for a caning referendum that has already secured signatures of support from the entire KMT caucus plus two independents. If the proposal makes it through the legislature and is submitted to the Central Election Commission (CEC), the referendum could be held on the same day as the year-end nine-in-one local elections.

Caning involves restraining an offender over a frame and striking them with a rattan cane at full force. It is explicitly designed to be severely painful and humiliating. While Singapore and Malaysia are the most well-known practitioners, approximately 16 countries worldwide practice caning or similar punishments, mostly in nations governed by Islamic law. 

KMT legislators believe it could be a more effective deterrent for child abuse, sexual assault, and large-scale fraud. However, DPP Legislator Rosalia Wu (吳思瑤) criticized the move as exploiting caning as an electoral issue, saying that while harsher sentencing is acceptable, caning is not, particularly since the signing of two international human rights covenants under former President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九). 

Under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the UN Human Rights Committee has consistently classified caning as a “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”

H for Rti News