Yubri

September 2019

Hello, I'm Frood. I noticed that in this edit to Republic of China Armed Forces, you removed content without adequately explaining why. In the future, it would be helpful to others if you described your changes to Wikipedia with an edit summary. If this was a mistake, don't worry, the removed content has been restored. If you think I made a mistake, or if you have any questions, you can leave me a message on my talk page. Thank you. - Frood (talk!) 03:37, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

@Frood: The following text was removed:

It is important to note that the implementation of military conscription policies in occupied territory is a war crime under the Hague and Geneva Conventions, see HR, art. 45.[7] see GC, art. 51.[8] . The fact that Taiwan was occupied territory was confirmed by an official CIA Report issued in March 1949.[9]

The fact that Taiwan is still regarded as "occupied territory" by the "Nationalist Government" in 2019 is dubious. Illegal martial law ended in 1989 in Taiwan and direct democratic elections occurred in 1996. Under the 1907 Hague Convention (see HR article 42), a "territory is considered occupied when it is actually placed under the authority of the hostile army. The occupation extends only to the territory where such authority has been established and can be exercised." Given that the ROC army is no longer placed under the authority of the KMT and that the army is subordinate to a democratically elected president, it is unlikely that the ROC army is still considered a hostile army nor can Taiwan be considered under the authority of the army itself. Most would consider the transfer of authority to a democratically elected government by the people in Taiwan and that democratic government re-establishing the full exercise of sovereignty as the end to the state of occupation. Taiwan can be considered under illegal martial law from 1949 to 1989, and hence, subjected to illegal military conscription policies.

There are arguments for the United States Military Government (USMG) maintaining Taiwan as an occupied territory due to the fact no legislation from Congress has announced the end of USMG control over Taiwan -- however, as USMG is not the government conducting military conscription in Taiwan, this reading does not make sense either in the context of this article.

Regardless of reading, many of these arguments for and against the legalities of Taiwan's political status have been covered in other articles on the Wiki, including the usage of the exact CIA source. The relevance of adding these lines of text, particularly in the Names section of the page, is uncertain at best. Yubri (talk) 09:14, 7 September 2019 (UTC)