Taipei City councilors from the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) blasted Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (
The accusation was leveled at Ma during yesterday's interpellation session at the city council for what they described as half-hearted attempts to rein in the sex industry.
"The sex industry in Taipei has become rampant since Ma took over as mayor five years ago," said Councilor Wang Shih-chien (王世堅), pointing out that there were over 200 KTVs, restaurants and wine shops overtly or covertly providing sexual services throughout Taipei.
PHOTO: CHEN TSE-MING, LIBERTY TIMES
"Yet we never saw Ma's administration crack down on these illegal businesses with any resolve," Wang said.
"Often the police would only enforce the law in a perfunctory manner. Some of them have even accepted bribes from these busi-nesses," Wang said.
Wang showed a table listing alleged protection fees which sex workers pay to police.
Wang also said that sex-related businesses have to pay between NT$10,000 and NT$80,000 per month, according to their relationship with police, so that they can operate without hindrance.
"The police became rich through graft, and turn a blind eye to the sex industry and even cover for them," said Wang, stressing Ma should be held responsible for the police's conduct.
Wang, together with fellow DPP councilors Hsu Kuo-yung (
The DPP councilors also criticized Ma for not handling the banning of pornographic VCDs with the same vigor as a contested VCD lampooning People First Party (PFP) Chairman James Soong (
"The city government clamped down on the VCD that made fun of Soong with a surprising swiftness, yet they seem to pretend not to see these VCDs without registration or copyright that are on the market," Hsu said.
"I suspect that Ma handles cases with specific targets in mind," Hsu said, adding that Ma was acting from political motivation because of pressure exerted on him by PFP city councilors.
Ma denied the accusations and said the city government enforced the law regardless of target or content.
"All enforcement conforms to law. There's no difference in treatment in terms of the object of that treatment," said Ma, adding that the city government had been working hard to crack down on the sex industry and would never reduce its power to do so.
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