Opposition legislators yesterday criticized the size of the Ministry of Interior's anti-corruption task force in Hualien County, alleging the group is undermining residents' integrity and human rights.
"While we support the importance of keeping the by-election clean, we think [Minister of the Interior] Yu Cheng-hsien (
In a bid to crackdown on vote-buying in the by-election, Yu announced on Tuesday that the ministry had dispatched more than 400 police officers from other counties to Hualien.
Task force members are serving as sentries at 24-hour checkpoints on roads and major intersections, as well as patrolling villages.
"The large scale police force has turned Hualien into a kingdom of police," Liu said. "The overt presence of a large number of police officers has made locals feel insecure -- they feel as though they are back in the martial-law era."
The addition law-enforcement personnel are in Hualien to support a total of 1,277 local policemen assigned to anti-vote-buying duties.
According Yu, an additional 5,200 policemen are standing by to ensure that campaign misconduct will be eradicated in the county.
In view of the number of investigations into vote-buying allegations in the county's villages and townships, PFP legislative caucus deputy convener Chiu Yi (邱毅) said the DPP had resorted to acts that were close to human-rights violations in a bid to win the election.
"Locals are being humiliated, making it seems as if Hualien people are all guilty of committing crimes," Chiu said.
In response to the criticism, Yu emphasized that all searches and checks are based on reasonable suspicion.
"There will be no violation of the Constitution or the law," Yu said.
He said the task force has helped restrict vote-buying efforts.
In view of the tight race in Hualien, Yu said having police on 24-hour duty in order to keep the by-election free of vote buying was done according to the law.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching