…As Japan court extends Ghosn detention***

Taiwan will enact a separate law for same-sex unions after conservative groups won a recent referendum battle, the premier said, as LGBT activists Friday urged the government to abide by a landmark ruling to offer equal marriage rights.

Gay rights campaigners want the existing marriage law to be amended and have said separate regulations would make them second-class citizens.

But conservative groups argue that gay marriages should not come under the current Civil Code, which defines marriage as between a man and a woman.

Taiwan’s top court last year voted to legalise gay marriage, the first place in Asia to do so. It ruled that the change should be implemented in two years but did not specify how it wanted gay marriage to be brought in.

Premier William Lai of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) announced the plan for a separate law during a meeting with lawmakers Thursday to review the party’s local election defeat last weekend.

Some observers have said the gay marriage issue played into the results and hit a nerve in conservative southern Taiwan, the DPP’s traditional stronghold, where it lost control of Kaohsiung city for the first time in 20 years.

President Tsai Ing-wen had championed gay marriage before she was elected but has since said there needs to be more consensus in society.

Rival referendums on same-sex unions held alongside the local elections Saturday saw “pro-family” groups defeat pro-gay campaigners in what Amnesty International called a “bitter blow and a step backwards for human rights in Taiwan”.

A referendum on whether marriage should only be recognised as between a man and a woman in Taiwan’s Civil Code won more than seven million votes, as did another calling for same-sex unions to be regulated under a separate law.

Gay rights activists had proposed that the Civil Code should give same-sex couples equal marriage rights, but only garnered three million votes.

“We have to respect public opinion and abide by the referendum outcome. We have to revise a law other than the Civil Code, which is (to enact) a separate law,” cabinet spokeswoman Kolas Yotaka told reporters, quoting the premier.

She said the government would abide by the Constitutional Court ruling when drafting the new law.

“As for the characteristic of the separate law and what it will be called… we will propose a bill that reflects and meets public consensus,” she said.

‘No more division’
LGBT activists in Taiwan now fear their newly won rights under the court ruling are under threat.

“We hope the social turmoil can come to an end soon and cause no more division and harm to any more families,” rights group Marriage Equality Coalition Taiwan said in a statement.

According to the group, three gay people committed suicide after the referendum result while more than a dozen have attempted suicide or self-harmed.

It urged the cabinet to abide by the top court ruling as well as consulting gay rights group when drafting the bill.

“Pro-family” groups on Friday urged the government to realise the referendum outcome as soon as possible and vowed to set up a taskforce to monitor the law-making process.

“The ball is in the government’s court. The people are watching with their eyes wide open if it acts seriously and responsibly to realise their decision,” said the Coalition for the Happiness of Our Next Generation in a statement.

In the meantime, a Tokyo court on Friday extended the detention of former Nissan chief Carlos Ghosn, local media said, after his arrest on allegations of financial misconduct that have shaken the auto industry.

The extension means Ghosn could remain in a Tokyo cell for another 10 days while prosecutors investigate allegations he under-reported his salary by millions of dollars over five years.

The 64-year-old tycoon was arrested on November 19 and prosecutors have already extended his detention once, while two of the companies he led — Nissan and Mitsubishi Motors — have voted to remove him.

The extension gives prosecutors until December 10 to decide whether to indict Ghosn on charges of under-reporting his salary. If he is indicted, he could then be released awaiting trial, or held in pre-trial detention.

Prosecutors could also choose to file additional charges against him, and with each charge they can seek to hold Ghosn for another 22 days.

Ghosn’s detention even before charges have been officially filed against him has prompted some criticism abroad, particularly in France, where the executive holds citizenship.

On Thursday, the deputy head of the Tokyo prosecutor’s office rejected the criticism, saying: “We do not unnecessarily keep people in custody for a long time.”

“I do not criticise other countries’ systems just because they are different,” Shin Kukimoto added.

Ghosn, who denies the allegations against him, faces an array of claims involving hiding money and benefits he received while chairman of Nissan and head of an alliance between the Japanese firm, Mitsubishi Motors and France’s Renault.

– ‘Huge sums’ –
Nissan had been investigating Ghosn and close aide Greg Kelly for months after a whistleblower report, and accused the pair of a scheme to misrepresent the Brazil-born chief’s earnings.

Sources have since said Ghosn signed secret documents instructing aides to defer part of his salary, without disclosing this to shareholders.

The scheme allegedly involved under-reporting Ghosn’s income by around $44 million over five fiscal years to March 2015.

It allegedly began after new regulations came into force in the fiscal year 2009/2010, including a law requiring any company executives earning 100 million yen ($885,000) or more to declare it.

The same source said Nissan funds were secretly used to pay for residences for Ghosn in Rio de Janeiro and Lebanon, homes that local media said cost “huge sums” and had no legitimate business purpose.

Those sorts of expenses should have been disclosed as compensation but were arranged without shareholder approval and generally in secret, the source added.

Local media also reported that Ghosn used Nissan corporate money to make a donation to his daughter’s university and fund a family trip, and paid his sister around $100,000 a year for a fictitious role as an advisor.

Ghosn’s arrest sent shockwaves throughout the auto industry and beyond, with Japanese and French officials at pains to stress the alliance between the three companies would not collapse.

On Thursday, executives from the three firms reaffirmed their commitment to the alliance despite reports of tension in the partnership, particularly on the part of Nissan, which outsells its French counterpart Renault.

While Mitsubishi Motors and Nissan have removed Ghosn, he remains chairman and CEO of Renault.

French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire on Thursday said there was no question of changing the alliance’s balance of power.

The rules of the partnership state that Renault chooses the alliance’s CEO, who wields a tie-breaking vote in board decisions, while Nissan names the deputy.

Japanese media said Friday that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe would meet French President Emmanuel Macron on the sidelines of the G20 summit this weekend to discuss the case.

Japan’s government declined to confirm the meeting, but a spokesman said it was important to maintain stable relations despite the case against Ghosn.

AFP