Bamboo Union (竹聯幫) gangster and pan-blue supporter Chu Chia-hsun (朱家訓) was ordered detained by the Taoyuan District Court yesterday for allegedly directing gangsters to attack pan-green supporters at CKS International Airport on Tuesday.
"Prosecutors applied for the court to hold Chu in custody because he has repeatedly lead alleged gangsters in creating trouble at pan-blue camp rallies," Chiang Kuei-chang (
"Chu is likely to flee if he is released, so prosecutors decided to apply to hold him in custody," Chiang said.
PHOTO: YU JUI-JEN, TAIPEI TIMES
Police said their investigation into the airport clashes showed that many young gangsters were there.
Chu's ex-wife, Wang Lan (
Police said Chu, the former head of the Tiger Division, and Wang have led gangsters to join most of the pan-blue camp's rallies since the presidential election in March last year.
Chu was arrested after reportedly leading a riot at a pan-blue rally on April 10 last year. At that time the Taipei Prosecutors' Office applied to keep him in custody, but the court finally released him on NT$30,000 bail.
Police said Wang led a group of dozens of gangsters to the Taipei Prosecutors' Office when prosecutors questioned Chu there last year, but they did not cause trouble.
Another member of the Grand Alliance to Safeguard the Republic of China, Lin Da-tsung (
Police said the young gangsters lead by Chu and Wang identify themselves by dressing in black.
The Bamboo Union is one of the country's major crime gangs and is composed largely of Mainlanders.
In October 2003 Wang and Chu were arrested for organizing the nation's first all-female gang, the Phoenix Corps, consisting of more than 100 young women, mostly high-school students.
Police have said Wang and other corps members are brutal and cold-hearted. They said Wang had ordered one girl who wanted to quit the group to be stripped naked, dragged out into the street and humiliated.
Police said the Tiger Division is involved in extortion, drugs and pirated VCDs while the Phoenix Corps focused on extortion.
A small number of Taiwanese this year lost their citizenship rights after traveling in China and obtaining a one-time Chinese passport to cross the border into Russia, a source said today. The people signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of neighboring Russia with companies claiming they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, the source said on condition of anonymity. The travelers were actually issued one-time-use Chinese passports, they said. Taiwanese are prohibited from holding a Chinese passport or household registration. If found to have a Chinese ID, they may lose their resident status under Article 9-1
Taiwanese were praised for their composure after a video filmed by Taiwanese tourists capturing the moment a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck Japan’s Aomori Prefecture went viral on social media. The video shows a hotel room shaking violently amid Monday’s quake, with objects falling to the ground. Two Taiwanese began filming with their mobile phones, while two others held the sides of a TV to prevent it from falling. When the shaking stopped, the pair calmly took down the TV and laid it flat on a tatami mat, the video shows. The video also captured the group talking about the safety of their companions bathing
PROBLEMATIC APP: Citing more than 1,000 fraud cases, the government is taking the app down for a year, but opposition voices are calling it censorship Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday decried a government plan to suspend access to Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu (小紅書) for one year as censorship, while the Presidential Office backed the plan. The Ministry of the Interior on Thursday cited security risks and accusations that the Instagram-like app, known as Rednote in English, had figured in more than 1,700 fraud cases since last year. The company, which has about 3 million users in Taiwan, has not yet responded to requests for comment. “Many people online are already asking ‘How to climb over the firewall to access Xiaohongshu,’” Cheng posted on
A magnitude 5.7 earthquake yesterday struck off the coast of Hualien, causing brief transportation disruptions in northern and eastern Taiwan, as authorities said that aftershocks of magnitude 5 or higher could occur over the next three days. The quake, which hit at 7:24pm at a depth of 24.5km, registered an intensity of 4 in Hualien and Nantou counties, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries. In Taipei, the MRT railway’s operations control center received an earthquake alert and initiated standard safety procedures, briefly halting trains on the Bannan (blue) line for about a minute.