The Qigong group Tai Ji Men (太極門) sued Taipei Prosecutor Hou Kuan-jen (侯寬仁) yesterday for filing fraud charges against the president of the group in a case that dragged on for 10 years before the defendant was cleared.
To the sound of traditional qigong drumming, more than 20 Tai Ji Men members arrived at the Taipei District Prosecutors Office to file a slander and malpractice lawsuit against Hou with the Taiwan High Court Prosecutors’ Office.
The group’s attorney, Tsai Fu-chiang (蔡富強), said Hou indicted Hong Shih-ho (洪石和) and several of his followers on fraud charges in 1997. The defendants were found not guilty recently — 10 years and seven months after they were first indicted and detained.
PHOTO: FANG PIN-CHAO, TAIPEI TIMES
Hou ordered the detention of four Tai Ji Men followers for allegedly helping Hong to solicit donations, Tsai said.
The attorney said the courts had ruled in January the four were eligible for compensation for wrongful detention, and the Control Yuan had also said that Hou had abused his prosecutorial power during the investigation process.
The group’s many hardships over the last 10 years had been caused by Hou, Tsai said.
Hong, who is also known as Hong Tao-tze (洪道子), founded Tai Ji Men in 1966. The group has tens of thousands of practitioners, and has also has two centers on the West Coast of the US.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift