Friends and family members of the two demonstrators struck by a police car last month at an anti-government protest said yesterday they plan to stage a rally outside Taipei City Hall, possibly this week or next.
Lin Chien-lun (林建綸), a neighbor of the victims, said he was planning to mobilize 400 people for the protest.
Lin mobilized about 100 people from Bade (八德) in Taoyuan County to stage a protest outside Taipei City Hall last month to complain about the punishment meted out to the officers involved.
They said it was too light and that another disciplinary meeting should be held.
The officers — stationed at Taipei City’s Zhongzheng First Precinct — each received a major demerit and two minor demerits, while their supervisors each received a minor demerit.
Lin said he could accept the city’s request that the family of victim Chang Chung-hsiung (張忠雄) pay for his expenses now and claim compensation later, but he found the national compensation nothing but an empty promise.
“I don’t think it will be approved, because it is very hard to get national compensation,” he said. “I would like to see the city give the family a more concrete promise.”
As for what this should constitute, Lin said he would need to discuss the matter with the victims’ family.
The Taipei City Government yesterday said it would shoulder the expenses but blamed the family for not filing for national compensation.
Taipei Secretariat Director Yang Hsi-an (楊錫安) said Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) had instructed related agencies to complete the process of national compensation as soon as possible, but the family had yet to file the request.
It was not a matter of how much money should be given to the family, Yang said, but how much was needed.
“Maybe the family wants NT$5 million [US$150,000] but it might not be enough,” he said. “We need to know exactly how much he [Chang] earned, how much a caregiver costs, and how long they will hire the person.”
As the process of national compensation takes time, Yang said the city would pay for the expenses in the meantime as long as the family could produce evidence showing how much was needed.
“We are partially responsible for the incident, but any city payment must go through a legal process,” he said. “The family can claim compensation from the city if they can present receipts.”
Yang said it was unfair to say that the City Government did not offer any assistance to the victims, especially to Chang.
“There must be some kind of misunderstanding here. We are more than willing to provide help at any time,” Yang said.
“I have personally talked to Chang’s brother twice over the telephone, explaining the whole situation and we have even mailed a [national compensation] application form to the family,” he said.
As the Zhongzheng First Precinct hoped the city could use the second emergency fund to pay for Chang’s medical expenses and caregiver — which have been funded by the precinct since the accident — Yang said yesterday there should not be any problem as long as the precinct made the request.
Yang, however, said that he did not think it was necessary to use the second emergency fund because there was still money left in the first emergency fund.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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:
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not