On January 7, the Legislative Yuan of the Republic of China (Taiwan) had the Third Reading of the amendment to the Criminal Code that includes clear punishment for those who commit crimes such as producing or distributing sexual image content without consent. Legislators also passed a third reading of amendments to the Crime Victim Protection Act (犯罪被害人權益保障法), which provides protection for victims of digital sexual violence.
For more information on these amendments, please visit: https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2023/01/08/2003792190
Organizations such as the Garden of Hope Foundation, Taipei Women’s Rescue Foundation, ECPAT Taiwan, Child Welfare League Foundation, and many legislatures have been calling for change for over a year now, ever since a major cyber sexual abuse crime was exposed in Taiwan between 2020 to 2021.
A known Taiwanese Youtuber and his associate created fake pornography using Deepfake technology, with which he swapped the faces of celebrities and politicians with those of the actors in adult films. More than a hundred people were victimized, but there was no proper law that could deal with cyber sexual crimes like this at the time. In the end, the perpetrators of the crimes were only charged with violation of the Personal Data Protection of the victims.
Now that Amendment to the Criminal Code and the Crime Victim Protection Act had been amended, there are still two laws, the Sexual Assault Crime Prevention Act, and the Child and Youth Sexual Exploitation Prevention Act that need to be amended to complete the criminalization of digital gender-based violence and provide protection for the victims of it before we have a special legislation for the issue.