The former chief of Taipei’s Zhongzheng First Police Precinct, Fang Yang-ning (方仰寧), has been appointed head of the Pingtung County Police Bureau in the latest personnel transfer of law-enforcement officials.
Fang was the police officer in charge of events during last year’s Sunflower movement.
He received condemnation for ordering police to forcibly remove protesters occupying the Executive Yuan’s main chamber on March 23 and March 24, during which large numbers of people were beaten by riot police and sustained injuries.
Photo: Chien Jung-fong, Taipei Times
Fang was also a central figure during a post-legislature occupation event on April 11 last year, when hundreds of student protesters and their supporters assembled outside the Zhongzheng First Police Precinct to demonstrate against Fang after he announced a denial of all further requests by civic groups for rallies or sit-in protests in areas surrounging the legislature.
Fang’s appointment at the Pingtung County Police Bureau is the most notable among a list of 39 officials up for promotion and job transfers as announced by the National Police Agency (NPA) on Friday.
It is seen as another promotion for Fang, who was elevated in rank when he was transferred from his role as precinct chief to head the NPA traffic division in August last year.
Fang’s new role has been interpreted by some people as a “political appointment” to reward his “faithful service in carrying out orders from above.”
Pingtung County Commissioner Pan Meng-an (潘孟安) said he respects the NPA’s decision.
However, Fang’s promotion was criticized by those who suffered injuries arising from police brutality during the Sunflower movement.
“The NPA has been trying to cover up its blunders and wrongful handling of protesters during past year’s events. Fang and other officers were not punished, rather they were given promotions. This only serves to diminish the public’s trust in the police,” Taiwan Solidarity Union Legislator Chou Ni-an (周倪安) said.
Chou was among the more than 160 people injured during a police crackdown on protesters during the Sunflower movement.
Lin Ming-hui (林明慧), a high-school teacher from Taichung who also sustained injuries during the protest said: “This is how the police system works. They are tools used by their superiors, and they have to carry out their objective by any possible means. If they do their job, then they get promoted.”
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
RSS