｜ The Two Covenants Signed but Not Ratified Under Martial Law After World War II, the ROC became one of the founding members of the United Nations. P. C. Chang, then representative of the Republic of China in the United Nations Security Council and vice chairman of the Human Rights Commission, was well-respected by fellow members of the Commission for his knowledge of human rights and greatly influenced the content drafted in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. With a background in education, P. C. Chang advocated conscience and rationality as the bases of human rights. To avoid monopolization by Western theology, he cleverly provided an Asian perspective. He also played a key role in establishing the universality of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Regrettably, martial law was declared in Taiwan on May 20, 1949. On December 7 of the same year, the ROC government relocated the capital to Taipei, Taiwan as per a presidential order. A number of intellectuals that opposed communism and supported liberalism—Lei Chen, Yin Hai-kuang, Hsu Fu-kuan, Tso Shun-sheng, Hsia Tao-ping, and Fu Cheng, to mention a few—migrated along to Taiwan and continued their fight for democracy and constitutionalism in this land. In 1966, the UN further codified the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, passing the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which are generally referred to as the “two covenants”. The ROC government, now in Taiwan, quickly signed the two covenants in 1967, but did not ratify them in parliament (Legislative Yuan), even by the time the ROC lost its representation of China in 1971. 14 The biggest problem with not ratifying the two covenants is that the government still imposed martial law with strict human rights restrictions within the area of its effective jurisdiction (Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen, and Matsu), never fulfilling its obligations as a signatory to implement rights according to the covenants. The Kuomintang (KMT, or Chinese Nationalist Party) had full power at the time. It would have been easy to have the Legislative Yuan ratify the two covenants. However, a “covenant” is different from a “declaration”. Once the two covenants were ratified and sent to the United Nations, completing procedures for the ROC to be a formal signatory, the government would have had to abolish the martial law and other controlling measures to pass the review of the UN Commission on Human Rights. Articles 19, 21, and 22 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights specifically stipulate freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, and freedom of association, all of which were severely denied by the Martial Law in Taiwan. According to Article 11 of the Martial Law, the first power that “the commander-in-chief within an area under martial law” has is “the power to stop assembly, association, demonstration, and petition and to ban speech, lectures, newspapers, magazines, illustrated notices, slogans, and other publications”. The martial law also gave the commander-inchief the right to limit or prohibit religious activities, ban strikes, “open mail and telegrams and withhold or confiscate them when necessary”, and interrogate suspects. In total, there are 11 violations related to the denial of freedom of religion, labor rights of association, privacy in communications, personal freedom, and property rights stipulated in the two covenants. Article 7 of the Martial Law also stipulates that local administrative officers, judges, and prosecutors Chapter 1 ｜ Martial Law: Derailing From International Human Rights Trends May 19, 1949: Declaration of Martial Law published in Taiwan Shin Sheng Daily News. Courtesy of: Academia Historica 15