A Taiwanese employer has been indicted by the Banciao Prosecutors’ Office on a charge of coercion for allegedly forcing Indonesian workers to eat pork.
Noting that religious freedom is a universal value, the prosecutors charged Chang Wen-ling (張雯琳), wife of Shin Hua Hang Fashion Co’s owner, of disrespecting her worker’s religion and violating their human rights, conduct that harmed the nation’s image. The prosecutors suggested a sentence of eight months for Chang.
According to the prosecutors, in September 2008 Chang used false documents to hire three Indonesian workers as caretakers, but it was later found that she had arranged for the trio to work in a factory. Citing the workers’ complaints, the prosecutors said the three were asked to work from 7am to midnight and forced to eat pork for seven months. In February last year, the three wrote a letter to Taipei County Government’s labor department asking for help, the prosecutors said.
After two inspection visits by bureau officials along with police, Chang and the broker through which she employed the trio were charged with violation of the Human Trafficking Prevention Act (人口販運防治法), the prosecutors said.
In a court hearing, Chang admitted she wanted the three to eat pork “so they would have more energy to do work,” but said that she did not force them to.
As the crime was committed before the Human Trafficking Prevention Act was enacted last June, the charge of violating the Human Trafficking Prevention Act against Chang and the broker was dropped, the prosecutors said.
While there have been rumors in the past about Muslim Indonesians being forced by their employers to eat pork, Taiwan International Workers Association yesterday said the Chang case marked the first time in which such a rumor has been found to have substance in a judicial case since Taiwan allowed the hiring of foreign workers in 1991.
The association said foreign workers in need of advice can call (02)2595-6858 for assistance.
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:
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
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
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