The Ministry of Justice needs to implement new rules to handle incidents of physical assault involving Chinese visitors to Taiwan, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Tsai Huang-liang (蔡煌瑯) told a press conference yesterday, following a recent incident.
A tour guide surnamed Fan (范), who attended the press conference, alleged that on Saturday he was attacked by a Chinese tourist from another group “for no reason” while taking his group to a restaurant in Taitung.
Taitung police came to the scene, but they did not make any arrests or take anyone back to the station for questioning, Fan said.
Photo: CNA
After reaching Hualien, Fan filed a complaint, after which Taitung police began questioning those who witnessed the incident, Chang said, adding that jurisdiction over the case was transferred to the Hualien District Prosecutor’s Office on Wednesday.
Prosecutor Fan Chen-chung (范振中) said that if the victim filed a complaint with the authorities, the case would be accepted.
Tsai said there had been more than 10 incidents of Chinese -tourists engaging in criminal activity since 2007, including theft, robbery and assault.
However, several cases were either closed with no charges or police simply declined to take action, he said.
“Can we expect Chinese to show up in a Taiwanese court just because we send a subpoena to their home in China?” Tsai asked, adding that police had no -recourse against Chinese who commit crimes in this country.
There have been several incidents of Taiwanese being attacked by Chinese in which the alleged perpetrator should have been detained and denied permission to leave Taiwan pending investigation, Tsai said, adding that he planned to ask the ministry to write a new set of rules to deal with such situations.
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