A blockbuster political ‘thriller’ is giving way to a deluge of allegations of sexual harassment and assault in many quarters
The first big wave of the #MeToo movement to break out in Taiwan began thanks to a thriller Taiwanese politician who is having a lot of success on Netflix. The Serie, Wave Makers, follows a group of politicians from different parties during an electoral campaign for the presidential elections. In one of the chapters there is a scene in which a worker complains to her boss, one of the candidates running for the presidential race, that a party colleague has sexually harassed. “We won’t let this accusation fade. We won’t let it go,” the boss promises.
The scene was widely applauded in Taiwan, where local politics have routinely kept the bad habit of covering up scandals before they came out and damaged the party. But that seems to have changed. Suddenly, the case that was exposed in the series took the leap to social networks and from there to the streets with an avalanche of complaints of harassment and sexual assault in many sectors, especially in politics, splashing the ruler. progressive democratic party (PDP).
Complaints from the past that were silenced by the parties and forgotten by the press have been put back on the table. To the point that President Tsai Ing-wen has apologized up to two times this week for the scandals that have come to light.
“Our society as a whole must be re-educated. People who have been sexually harassed are the victims, whom we must protect and not treat with prejudice,” Tsai said after one of her national policy advisers, Yan Chih-fawill present his resignation after a complaint for sexual harassment of a party employee in 2018.
Taiwan, as in the Netflix series, is currently facing a tight presidential race that will be resolved in the January 2024 elections. Tsai’s PDP, which has been in power for two legislatures, is concerned that the cases that are emerging could cause a turn in the next elections and boost its biggest rival, the nationalist Kuomintang (KMT), currently in opposition and whose line prioritizes strengthen relations with Chinawhich claims this autonomous island as part of its territory.
The local press says that the ruling party has up to eight “incidents of sexual harassment” on the table. Lai Ching-tecurrent president of the PDP and main candidate to represent his party in the next elections, promised that “they will handle all complaints seriously” and “punish those who tried to cover up the cases”. Lai acknowledged that the complaints filed this week had damaged the reputation of his party.
But the KMT has not escaped these days either. #MeToo. A legislator of this formation, Fu Kun-chiwas accused of sexually assaulting a journalist in 2014. KMT presidential candidate, Hou You-yicalled for an investigation and assured that his party would never “stand idly by.”
The wave of complaints started after a former PDP worker, Chen Qian-rouwrote on Facebook that she had been sexually harassed a few months ago by a film director after filming a video of propaganda electoral. Chen said that she told everything to the head of the PDP’s women’s development department, Undersecretary Hsu Chia-tien, who told her that it was her fault for not “avoiding the director” and that the party could do nothing for her. Hsu resigned from her earlier this month.
Following Chen’s public complaint, another twenty victims also exposed their cases of sexual harassment related to different political parties in a nation where women occupy 42% of the seats in Parliament. In addition, every day new complaints appear in the media that dot teachers, firefighters, officials and even a well-known former student leader of the protests of the tiananmen square 1989, Wang Dan, who took refuge in Taipei and has been accused of rape. According to the Ministry of Health and Well-being of this island where 23 million people live, in 2022 17,000 sexual assaults were reported and 2,100 incidents of sexual harassment fled.
According to the criteria of
The Trust Project
Know more
