The Executive Yuan yesterday said than a criminal investigation had been launched into a group of pan-blue lawmakers who led supporters on a violent rampage outside the Central Election Commission (CEC) on Friday night.
People First Party (PFP) legislators, including Lee Ching-hua (
The protesters shouted, "Truth unclear, suspend declaration; down with the commission," and smashed windows at the entrance before forcing their way inside. They also threw rocks and eggs and scuffled with police.
PFP Legislator Fu Kun-chi (
"The lawmakers who led the crowd to break into the CEC yesterday to attempt to stop the official announcement of the winners of the election have broken the Assembly and Parade Law (集會遊行法) and the Criminal Code. The judiciary has finished gathering evidence and has started to investigate the case," Cabinet Spokesman Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said.
Lin said that Premier Yu Shyi-kun had instructed the judiciary to investigate the incident yesterday.
Lin said that the damage to CEC property and threat to civil servants who were carrying out their duties yesterday was a violation of the Criminal Code, and that lawbreakers could be sentenced up to three years.
"Some pan-blue legislators broke the law intentionally and gathered a crowd to cause a riot. This is a wrong example for democracy and everything will be investigated according to the law," Lin said.
Meanwhile, the Cabinet also set up a special task force, headed by the premier, to deal with the pan-blue's mass demonstration yesterday.
Yu said that the administration should monitor the demonstration closely, and that there was no space for China's intervention in Taiwan's domestic affairs.
He also instructed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to keep in close contact with the US and Japan, and to hold international press conferences whenever necessary.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,