Minister of Justice Morley Shih (
Shih said the ministry would hold a meeting in a month to solicit the views of experts and to discuss whether caning should be introduced as a form of punishment, particularly for convicted rapists, based on a variety of factors such as human rights protection and social values.
His comments came in response to a suggestion made by several legislators last week that serial rapists should be caned in addition to serving prison terms as a means of remedying their deviant behavior.
The legislators made the suggestion in the wake of the rape of a medical student who was abducted near the MRT's Jientan Station in Shilin on March 11. Two suspects have been arrested, one of whom is also suspected of raping a 60-year-old female taxi driver shortly before his arrest last Saturday.
Shih said the ministry would also decide within a month whether the three-month assessment period for electronic monitoring of paroled rapists should be shortened to less than two weeks.
Last November the ministry approved a decree requiring paroled rapists to wear electronic devices that monitor their behavior. However, the devices are to be used only after a three-month assessment period from the date of a rapist's release on parole.
Several lawmakers have questioned the long gap, with Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lo Shih-hsiung (
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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