Coast Guard Administration (CGA) officers yesterday arrested eight female foreign nationals in Yunlin County on suspicion of offering sexual services at a karaoke bar.
The CGA said in a press statement that its officers busted a criminal group on April 25 that arranged for Vietnamese women to enter Taiwan and engage in prostitution.
CGA officers arrested 21 Vietnamese on suspicion of engaging in prostitution at the time and discovered the group had also arranged for other foreign nationals to work as prostitutes at hostess bars around the county.
Posing as customers, several CGA officers yesterday morning visited a karaoke bar. The officers revealed their true identities after the hostesses took off their clothes and began dancing naked in front of them while playing sex games.
The officers used hidden cameras to film the foreign hostesses as evidence of their actions.
The officers arrested four Vietnamese women and four Indonesian women at the bar.
However, while law officials are busy cracking down on illegal activities at hostess bars, prosecutors remain at odds over whether bar hostesses that offer sexual services in private rooms are breaking the law.
The debate emerged earlier this month, after a Miaoli prosecutor decided not to indict four foreign bar hostesses for playing sex games with their customers while in a private KTV room.
Miaoli prosecutors said that because the bar hostesses were in a private room when dancing naked, they had not committed public indecency.
The prosecutor said that the clause defines indecent behavior in public as behavior seen by unrelated individuals. But since the bar's private rooms are considered private places, the four Vietnamese hostesses therefore did not commit public indecency.
In other cases hostesses have been indicted for offering sexual services in private KTV rooms.
ALIGNED THINKING: Taiwan and Japan have a mutual interest in trade, culture and engineering, and can work together for stability, Cho Jung-tai said Taiwan and Japan are two like-minded countries willing to work together to form a “safety barrier” in the Indo-Pacific region, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) yesterday said at the opening ceremony of the 35th Taiwan-Japan Modern Engineering and Technology Symposium in Taipei. Taiwan and Japan are close geographically and closer emotionally, he added. Citing the overflowing of a barrier lake in the Mataian River (馬太鞍溪) in September, Cho said the submersible water level sensors given by Japan during the disaster helped Taiwan monitor the lake’s water levels more accurately. Japan also provided a lot of vaccines early in the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic,
Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁) on Monday announced light shows and themed traffic lights to welcome fans of South Korean pop group Twice to the port city. The group is to play Kaohsiung on Saturday as part of its “This Is For” world tour. It would be the group’s first performance in Taiwan since its debut 10 years ago. The all-female group consists of five South Koreans, three Japanese and Tainan’s Chou Tzu-yu (周子瑜), the first Taiwan-born and raised member of a South Korean girl group. To promote the group’s arrival, the city has been holding a series of events, including a pop-up
TEMPORAL/SPIRITUAL: Beijing’s claim that the next Buddhist leader must come from China is a heavy-handed political maneuver that will fall flat-faced, experts said China’s requirement that the Dalai Lama’s reincarnation to be born in China and approved by Beijing has drawn criticism, with experts at a forum in Taipei yesterday saying that if Beijing were to put forth its own Dalai Lama, the person would not be recognized by the Tibetan Buddhist community. The experts made a remarks at the two-day forum hosted by the Tibet Religious Foundation of His Holiness the Dalai Lama titled: “The Snow Land Forum: Finding Common Ground on Tibet.” China says it has the right to determine the Dalai Lama’s reincarnation, as it claims sovereignty over Tibet since ancient times,
Temperatures in some parts of Taiwan are expected to fall sharply to lows of 15°C later this week as seasonal northeasterly winds strengthen, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said today. It is to be the strongest cold wave to affect northern Taiwan this autumn, while Chiayi County in the southwest and some parts of central Taiwan are likely to also see lower temperatures due to radiational cooling, which occurs under conditions of clear skies, light winds and dry weather, the CWA said. Across Taiwan, temperatures are to fall gradually this week, dropping to 15°C to 16°C in the early hours of Wednesday
RSS