The Taipei District Court on Thursday acquitted Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Pan Meng-an (潘孟安) on charges of injuring former Department of Health (DOH) minister Yeh Ching-chuan (葉金川) in a scuffle at the legislature last year.
In the ruling, the district court judge ruled that Pan was innocent, saying that evidence such as video footage provided by TV news channels showed that former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator Chang Sho-wen (張碩文) was the biggest offender in the scuffle.
The judge said that the prosecutors’ decision not to indict Chang raised doubts about their political neutrality.
On Oct. 3 last year, Yeh was caught in a scuffle as lawmakers tried to prevent him from leaving the legislature after a meeting with bakery owners over the government’s response to the health scare over melamine-contaminated food from China.
The KMT caucus accused Pan and DPP Legislator Su Chen-ching (蘇震清) of grabbing the former minister by the neck and choking him, but Pan accused KMT caucus whip Lin Yi-shih’s (林益世) wife Peng Ai-chia (彭愛佳), a TV reporter, of trying to mislead the public into thinking that DPP legislators had resorted to violence.
Yeh was later admitted to National Taiwan University Hospital with high blood pressure.
The judge wrote in his ruling that after examining the evidence, he found Pan not guilty because he did not purposely cause harm to Yeh, and that the pushing and shoving was caused by the massive crowd that was gathered around Yeh.
The judge also criticized prosecutors for using double standards in evaluating whether to indict or not indict, because based on the evidence, Chang grabbed Yeh by the neck with his left hand to stop the former department head from leaving. The judge said that Chang’s action could constitute coercion because he was depriving Yeh of the ability to exercise his free will.
The Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office declined to comment on the ruling, saying only that they have yet to decide whether to file an appeal.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS