Police face rights charge

The recent crackdown on the sex industry in Taipei City has resulted in police abusing their powers, human rights groups said yesterday.

A conference organized by the Taiwan Association for Human Rights (台灣人權促進會), the Gender Sexuality Rights Association (性別人權協會) and the Taipei Bar Association (台北律師公會) said that police had set up traps to lure men and prostitutes into breaking the law so officers could arrest them.

The police were trying to make as many arrests as possible to meet Mayor Ma Ying-jeou's (馬英九) goal of eradicating the sex industry from Taipei.

"Usually, police like to `fish' when they are investigating minor cases, especially sex-related ones," said Lee Mao-sheng (李茂生), a criminal law professor at National Taiwan University.

To "fish" means to use entrapment.

"For example," he said, "a couple of weeks ago, a Taipei female police officer went on the Internet and targeted a college student from National Taiwan University who posted a message on the bulletin board saying that he would love to sleep with any woman who would pay. The officer arranged to meet the boy at a hotel room as part of a deal they made. When the boy showed up, other officers were waiting there to arrest him."

He said that he does not think the boy had "definitely" broken the law. And if the boy had broken the law, the female officer probably had as well, he said.

"Everybody should have a right to say whatever he wishes," Lee said. "Plus, saying does not equal doing. A person does not break the law by saying `I am going to kill somebody' before he really does it. In this case, the boy did not have sex with the female officer before he was arrested. He just showed up to meet her as she requested. Basically, he was not a suspect at the scene for a sexual case.

"As for the female officer, she has lured the boy into breaking the law and having sex with her. From another point of view, she has broken Article 29 of the Anti-Sexual Business Provisions for Children and Teenagers (兒童及青少年性交易防治條例), which clearly states that a person who lures somebody into a sexual transaction is considered to be breaking the law."

Josephine Ho (何春蕤), an advisor to the Gender Sexuality Rights Association and a professor at the National Central University, said that the police should be more careful when they are investigating so as to avoid infringing on people's rights.

"My concern is that the police should begin to investigate a suspect after they have evidence or confirmed tips, rather than lure a person into breaking the law according to the scenario written by the police in advance," Ho said.

"The police should investigate cases they have evidence on. If the police `fish' on the Internet, then I'm afraid that these police officers have invaded people's right to free speech, which they are not supposed to."

Kenneth Chiu (邱晃泉), a senior lawyer and convener of the Free Human Rights Union (自由人權聯盟), said that police raids on hotels in the prostitution crackdown were actually unlawful.

"Maybe a lot of people do not know that the police raids were actually illegal," he said.

"We cannot deny that the police did uncover many illegal sexual transactions and other criminal cases through their raids on hotels," Chiu said.

"However, there is no law saying that police officers are allowed to go to a hotel room and ask the visitors to open their doors for security checks without any search warrant in the middle of the night. It's totally in violation of people's rights."