People who abuse animals could go to jail if the Council of Agriculture's new draft amendments to the Animal Protection Law are passed by the legislature.
While animal protection activists welcomed the draft's proposed criminalization of animal abuse, legal experts at a public hearing held on Thursday were worried that provisions in the draft amendments empowering inspectors to enter private homes to rescue abused animals could go too far.
If the legislature were to adopt the amendments, the nation would become one of several countries including the US, the UK and Japan that criminalize animal abuse.
The draft amendments would impose prison sentences of up to one year and fines of up to NT$300,000 (US$9,100) for offenders found guilty of killing an animal by harassing, torturing, or injuring it. In cases where the animal is not killed, a fine from NT$10,000 to NT$50,000 will continue to be given.
A number of recent high-profile animal abuse cases in Taiwan have drawn new attention to the issue, including that of Fang Shang-wen (
But legal professionals at the meeting on Thursday suggested that the maximum one year sentence might fail as a deterrent because the courts can, at their discretion, reduce a one year sentence to probation or delayed prosecution.
They were also concerned that because criminal cases usually take six months to try, the penalty might not be imposed quickly enough to save abused animals.
Sakya Chuan-fa (
Another controversial new provision authorizes inspectors to enter private homes in emergency cases. Legal experts warned that this could be unconstitutional and expose untrained inspectors to dangerous situations.
Sakya said that animal rights groups were concerned that this provision might be used excessively and suggested that strict administrative regulations be drafted to prevent problems.
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:
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