Remembering Peng Wan-ru: DPP Reflects on Women's Affairs Director's Murder

TaiwanPlus News

Almost 30 years ago, the murder of Peng Wan-ru, then-director of the Democratic Progressive Party's women's affairs department, sparked massive calls for better protections for women's rights. On the UN Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, TaiwanPlus speaks with the DPP's Gender Equality Director, Lee Yen-jong, to learn about the country's progress since Peng's killing.

Transcript

00:00So Peng Wan Ru was a pretty prominent activist in the women's rights movement at the time

00:05of her death, and her murder also sparked more interest in this movement and concerns about

00:10violence against women.

00:11Could you tell us more about the reaction to her murder at the time within the DPP and

00:16also with the public?

00:18Okay.

00:19Back then, Peng Wan Ru was the first director of women's development of DPP, Democratic

00:25Progressive Party.

00:26And before she worked at DPP, she also worked for several permanent feminist organizations

00:32in Taiwan.

00:33She entered and she joined DPP to work for DPP because she wanted to bring the feminist movement

00:39into politics.

00:41By the time she was murdered, back then she was putting lots of energy in promoting gender

00:47quota of one-fourth inside DPP.

00:52And until the day she was murdered, she still tried to convince all our representatives and

01:01also all the political actors inside our party.

01:06She left the hotel very late, like maybe 10 o'clock in the morning or even later.

01:13So, and she entered this taxi and then she was murdered that night.

01:18And the next day, December 1st, 1995, 1996, that was the National Congress of DPP.

01:26And that was supposed to be the day that all our party representatives to vote for this proposal.

01:33But they waited on site for Peng Wan Ru until maybe like 10 o'clock, but she was not there.

01:41And they have been searching for, I think, two days.

01:43And at the end, her body was found in a suburb area of Kaohsiung County back then.

01:49And that was, and she was very, she was murdered and she was raped and she was like stabbed like maybe more than 30 times.

01:58So that was a shock, totally shock for Taiwanese society.

02:01Could you tell me more about the legal changes that happened after Peng Wan Ru's murder and also the societal changes?

02:08I think December 21st, the same year, there was a huge march, huge demonstration organizing a lot of people.

02:15All the political, political actors in different parties and all the feminist activists.

02:23And that was a huge demonstration in Taipei.

02:26So afterwards, Taiwanese parliament, we passed some several very milestone bills for women's protection, like code, I think,

02:37how do we call that?

02:39Code for prevention for domestic violence and also code for prevention of sexual assaults.

02:47Peng Wan Ru was murdered 29 years ago.

02:50Of course, we had some improvement in social awareness of victims of domestic violence and also victims of sexual assault.

02:59You can see the Me Too movement back in 2023 in Taiwan.

03:03After Peng Wan Ru's death, I think people tend to, people got to understand that sexual assault was really, really an issue in Taiwan.

03:12And our government started to put some resources and pass some legislation to implement this system to protect our victims.

03:20The policemen, our prosecutors and social workers, the people, the professionals who receive victims on the front line,

03:27they have more training to deal with the trauma of victims and also in the way they communicate with the victims.

03:35I think it's something very important.

03:36Now our system is much friendly compared to the one we had in 30 years ago.

03:42So that's, but we still have a style of improvement to do, but still this, we need to give the government credit for that.

03:49So that's nice

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