The prejudice suffered by the Tai Ji Men for more than twenty years must be denounced to the international community and to international institutions such as the United Nations, so that the international community may urge Taiwan to cease its persecution and comply with international human rights standards.
“religion and spirituality live in the hearts of the believers, but they create communities, and communities cannot exist without places where they can gather. For many religious and spiritual groups, these gathering places do not serve a functional purpose only. Land where devotees gather becomes sacred land. Religion and spirituality live in time and space. They separate portions of time and space from the daily temporal and spatial flow, appropriate them for themselves, and invest them with spiritual meanings. Taking their spaces away from spiritual movements means cutting their deepest roots.”
The European Court of Human Rights has denounced in the past similar abuses against the Jehovah’s Witnesses and other groups in France. Coordination des Associations et des Particuliers pour la Liberté de Conscience (CAP-LC) has mentioned in several previous written statements with this Human Rights Council the case of Tai Ji Men in Taiwan, a spiritual movement that has been declared innocent of all criminal accusations raised against it, including tax evasion, yet has continued to be harassed through ill-founded tax bills (more information on its case may be obtained through the website TaiJiMenCase.org).
Social Justice, Tax Reform, and the Tai Ji Men Case
Taijimen has been persecuted for more than a quarter of a century. It is a great irony of Taiwan’s human rights and has already attracted international attention. In recent years, the world-renowned human rights magazine “Bitter Winter” (Bitter Winter) and multinational international human rights websites have published hundreds of articles exposing the truth of the case. International human rights activists held a press conference in Washington DC on December 7, 2021, expressing Condemned, even 25 international senior scholars and human rights experts jointly wrote to President Tsai Ing-wen, urging her to solve the problem as soon as possible.
