The three journalists arrested while covering an intrustion into the Ministry of Education compound on July 23 yesterday said the report released by the Taipei City Government on the incident does not shed any light on the key questions surrounding the arrests.
Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) photographer Liao Chen-hui (廖振輝), Sung Hsiao-hai (宋小海) of news Web site Coolloud.org.tw (苦勞網) and freelance journalist Lin Yu-yu (林雨佑) were among 33 people arrested the day after a group of student activists entered the building to protest adjustments to the high-school curriculum guidelines.
Following the arrests, Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) issued a public apology and directed a city government task force to investigate. It released a draft report on its findings yesterday after meeting with the reporters, students and police.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
The report offered no criticism of the police and concluded with suggestions that police look into their decisionmaking processes and keep their emotions in check during fast-changing situations at protests.
Lin and Sung blasted the report at a press conference held outside the entrance of Taipei City Hall yesterday, saying it was “devoid of content” and reads like a grade-school report.
Lin said that the report was disappointing, with recommendations limited to improving the human rights education of police officers and directing police officers to pay attention to their attitude and methods.
“Could it be that’s Ko’s apology was fake?” Lin asked, adding that the report did not recommend any changes to the designation of police media contact officers, even though they had not seen any contact officers during the arrests.
The police department was directed to designate media contact officers at protest sites earlier this year after dropping proposals to require reporters to wear special vests and conduct interviews only in designated areas.
Ko has said that designating a media contact officer for the ministry break-in would have been impractical because of the suddenness of the incident.
Lin added that even though the police department said that the arrests were a special case because they took place at a crime scene, he had not been arrested while reporting on earlier break-ins at the Executive Yuan and the K-12 Education Administration buildings in Taipei.
Lawyer Wellington Koo (顧立雄) said the investigation detailed in the report was “perfunctory,” with no clear record of interviews with police officers.
Minister of Education Wu Se-hwa (吳思華) should resign if the ministry was clear about the whereabouts of the reporters, but still chose to sue, while Zhongzheng First Precinct Police Chief Chang Chi-wen (張奇文) should resign if the police department misled the ministry into believing the reporters had aided the break-in, he said, calling for the city government to clarify who was responsible for the arrests.
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