Amid the images on television of police evacuating protesters from the Executive Yuan compound, one officer from the National Police Agency’s Special Sixth Headquarters stood out — by his use of non-violent means.
Officer Lin Chih-hsiao (林致孝) was a lone figure who stopped more protesters from entering the compound through a window by blocking it and blowing his whistle.
Lin held out against hundreds of protesters until 3am on Monday morning and while the protesters had initially been annoyed at his incessant whistling, they later acknowledged that Lin had posed an effective barrier.
Screengrab from Facebook
Some students praised Lin by telling him: “You have good lung capacity” for continuing to blow his whistle for as long as he had.
Lin later said that his “noise attack” was an impromptu move.
Lin’s wife, Chang An-chen (張安箴), a prosecutor at the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office, said she stayed up the whole night in front of the television because Lin had promised to return home on Sunday and she could not reach him by telephone.
“It wasn’t until a friend sent us a clip showing my husband blocking the students from entering the Executive Yuan that I knew why my husband had not come back,” Chang said. “I feel proud seeing how he maintained his calm and reason against the crowd.”
Chang said her husband had not returned home in more than nine days and that their oldest son, who is two, had wondered “why Daddy was on the TV” when news channels kept replaying the scene.
“We were happy to see him come back on Wednesday, even if it was only for a brief 18 minutes,” Chang said, adding that her only wish was that her husband remained safe.
When asked to comment on the ongoing student movement, Lin said on Thursday: “There are voices of support for both police and the student protesters and both sides should respect each other’s efforts.”
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,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods