On June 25, the day before China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) Minister Zhang Zhijun’s (張志軍) arrival in Taiwan, seven members of the Democratic Front Against Cross-Strait Trade in Services Agreement and Democracy Tautin checked in to two rooms at the Novotel Taipei Taoyuan International Airport hotel in Taoyuan County. They planned to stage what they called a “Show a Red Card” protest at an afternoon meeting between Zhang and Mainland Affairs Council Minister Wang Yu-chi (王郁琦) at the hotel on the day of Zhang’s arrival.
However, on the morning of their planned protest, officers from the Aviation Police Bureau allegedly barged into the rooms. According to newspaper reports, the rooms were booked under the name of Democratic Front convener Lai Chung-chiang (賴中強), who was not on the scene at the time of the incident.
The hotel manager and aviation police demanded that anyone not registered on room bookings had to leave.
If the situation did proceed in this manner, by barging into the rooms without Lai’s prior consent, the hotel manager and police officers might have violated Article 306 of the Criminal Code (刑法) regarding “entering a person’s dwelling without reason.”
First, according to a 1980 Supreme Court ruling, since a hotel guest has the right of supervision over their hotel room and it is for accommodation, it can be seen as constituting their “dwelling.”
So when a hotel provides a room for guests, the rooms can be seen as a guest’s “dwelling” and should not be disturbed.
Although Lai was not in the room at the time, his personal rights should not have been violated and breaking into the rooms without proper cause could be considered an offense.
The question is: Did the hotel manager and aviation police break into the rooms without reason?
In other words, did they do so to prevent an offense being committed?
In a video provided by the protesters, the aviation police officers said that as none of the protesters in the rooms had registered, the police officers had the right to enter the rooms and demand that they leave.
The Novotel is a tourist hotel and is subject to the Regulations for Administration of Tourist Hotel Enterprises (觀光旅館業管理規則).
Two articles of the regulations are related to the registration of hotel guests.
Article 16 of the regulations states that “a tourist hotel enterprise shall maintain loose-leaf lodger registration books to record information on lodgers in accordance with the required format on a daily basis, and shall submit this information to the local police station or sub-station. The time for submitting such information shall be determined by the local police department or station. The lodger registration books indicated in the preceding paragraph shall be kept in inventory for half a year.”
Article 21 of the regulations says that “a tourist hotel enterprise shall take necessary measures or report to the local police station upon discovering any of the following conditions pertaining a lodger: One, suspicion of jeopardizing national security. Two, carrying of guns and weapons, dangerous goods, or other prohibited goods. Three, consumption of addictive drugs or other narcotics. Four, showing signs of committing suicide or being dead. Five, participating in group gambling or engaging in other behavior that causes a disturbance to the public or violates public order or good social morals, while refusing to follow order to desist. Six, forcible taking of lodgement without presenting proper identification documentation, or refusing to register for the lodgement. Seven, showing signs for suspicion of having committed other crimes.”
For any violation of Article 16, Article 43 of the regulations states that “punishment shall be imposed by the original processing authority in accordance with provisions in Sub-paragraph 3 in Paragraph 2 of Article 55 of the Act for the Development of Tourism” (發展觀光條例), with a fine of between NT$10,000 and NT$50,000.
However, the object of the sanction is the hotel itself, not the guests.
In addition, according to convention in the nation’s hotel industry, for the sake of its guests’ privacy, a hotel only requires one of the guests to register with an identification card, even if a group of guests book two or more rooms.
Few hotels actually require every single guest to register when checking in.
Lai registered when he checked in. He registered for two rooms. The hotel did not initially object to the other guests checking in without themselves registering.
Therefore, on subsequently discovering that there were people who had not registered staying in the rooms, the hotel ought to have had the registration desk address the situation and have the unregistered guests sign the ledger to make up for the omission.
How is it that the hotel staff were able to take it upon themselves, because there were unregistered guests in a room, to break in to that room, or to accompany the aviation police while they broke into the room, and ask the unregistered guests to leave the premises?
If the legality of this action is not questioned, people who check in to hotels in Taiwan, whether they be Taiwanese or foreigners, had best be careful, for if only one guest completes the registration procedure for a room or a number of rooms, any companions, relatives or friends who stay in the room with them will have to make sure they register if they do not want to be woken in the middle of the night by hotel staff or police breaking down the door and kicking them out of the hotel.
Even if the number of people checking in exceeded the sleeping capacity of the rooms booked, that would only constitute a simple civil dispute between the guests and the hotel management, in which neither the police nor the aviation police would have any cause to intervene.
According to an announcement posted on Novotel’s official Web site, the room was broken into to “ensure the safety of [their] guests.”
Did the guests have any prohibited goods? Had there been any indication of anyone committing suicide or any deaths? Had they been “engaging in other behavior that causes a disturbance to the public or violates public order or good social morals”?
All that they could say was that there were unregistered guests staying in the rooms. Did the hotel staff, on discovering this, make any attempt to get the guests to register? If they had not, why did they refuse to let them register and insist that they leave the room?
The only plausible explanation is that the aviation police let their imaginations get the better of them and were concerned that the activists in the room posed a problem and absolutely could not be allowed to besiege the visiting minister.
Their thinking had to be that the clause on “posing of a threat to public safety or arousing suspicion of having committed other crimes” applied to the guests.
If they were planning to join the demonstration at the airport, they might have been about to violate Article 6 of the Assembly and Parade Act (集會遊行法) prohibiting assembly at international airports and ports.
However, they were not protesting in the airport. They were just sitting in their room discussing it. If the authorities wanted to put a stop to the demonstration, that was a battle to be fought at the airport itself, not at the hotel.
The reason their room was broken into was not because they had failed to register all of the guests, it was because they were planning the “Red Card” protest against the meeting between Wang and Zhang.
The whole sorry affair is a return to the White Terror period.
Were the aviation police acting in accordance with the law? Certainly not. Without any cause to suspect anything illegal was taking place, they would have first had to secure a search warrant, if they wanted to break into a room.
Instead, it was their responsibility to protect the peace and privacy of the guests staying at the hotel. It is their responsibility to safeguard the freedom of domicile of citizens and to ensure that freedom is not impinged upon.
That the hotel staff, without a shred of evidence, willfully broke into a room constitutes breaking and entering: a criminal offense.
If the aviation police at the scene had stood by and let the hotel manager break in to the room in question, given their duty to protect the rights of the guests inside, they would have at the very least been guilty of nonfeasance, of the failure to act when action is called for.
If, on the other hand, they had been there to orchestrate the proceedings, then they are complicit in the criminal act.
It was just because they knew that the group staying in the room intended to attend the protest that they decided it would be appropriate to violate the guests’ freedom of domicile and invade their peace and privacy.
They were little more than a group of fascists, divested of the cloak of democracy, revealing their true nature, or, perhaps more succinctly, they were henchmen doing the work of fascists.
Because of their actions, Taiwan’s human rights protection index will plummet.
I think this one warrants a red card.
Chen Jyh-huei is an associate professor in the College of Law at National Chengchi University.
Translated by Eddy Chang and Paul Cooper
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