The National Security Bureau (NSB) and the Ministry of National Defense yesterday pointed the finger at each other over the action military police officers took against a woman who shouted "[President] Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), step down" during the New Year flag-raising ceremony.
A group of officers carried the woman away and used towels to gag her, causing her to pass out. She was then taken to a police station before later being taken to hospital.
When the woman shouted "A-Bian [the president's nickname] step down," the officers shouted "Viva Republic of China" in a bid to drown her out.
Lieutenant General Hsu Li-mong (許立孟) of the bureau's special duty command center said that he had been awaiting punishment from his supervisor, Director Hsueh Shih-min (薛石民), since Jan. 3, but Hsueh had not yet come to a decision.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lin Te-fu (林德福) criticized the NSB for deliberately delaying the process in the hope that the public would forget about the incident.
Hsu, however, said that there was a procedure to follow before any punishment was meted out. In other words, the bureau needed to hold a review meeting before handing down a verdict.
After calling a meeting on Jan. 2 to examine the implementation of security during the New Year ceremony, Hsu said that they discovered that orders had been carried out excessively and that the commander assigned to maintain order in the south parking lot, where the incident took place, should be held partially responsible.
Although he was in charge of overall security planning, Hsu denied that he was the one who ordered the military police to take such drastic action, adding that his order was to "implement the law strictly and handle the situation resolutely."
They would not physically disperse any protesters unless they first failed to talk them out of creating disturbances, Hsu said.
While Minister of National Defense Lee Jye (李傑) had pledged to mete out punishments but later changed his mind, KMT Legislator Joanna Lei (雷倩) said that she suspected his change of heart had something to do with his meeting with the president, who apparently endorsed the actions of the military police.
Secretary-General of the Armed Forces Police Command Wu Ying-ping (吳應平) said that the defense ministry and his command should not be held responsible because it was not their job to carry out special duties and if anything went wrong, it was the NSB's special duty commander center that should bear responsibility.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift