Four students who breached the Ministry of Education (MOE) compound in Taipei last year as part of a protest against adjustments to high-school history curriculum guidelines were yesterday found guilty on various charges by the Taipei District Court, while a fifth was found innocent.
Ying Jou-yu (尹若宇) was convicted of duress and sentenced to 40 days’ detention.
Peng Cheng (彭宬) and Tsai Ming-ying (蔡明穎) were also convicted of duress and could face 30 days’ detention, the same term facing Chen Po-yu (陳柏瑜), who was convicted of obstruction of official duties.
The four students were also ordered to perform 120 hours of community services at schools or agencies overseen by the ministry and placed on probation for two years.
Yan Hsiao-ho (閻孝何) was found innocent.
Tsai, a student at Aletheia University in New Taipei City, said that he would appeal the verdict, calling it “unacceptable.”
He questioned how he could be convicted of duress when he had not initiated physical contact with the police officer with whom he reportedly scuffled.
He said that it was the officer who jostled him.
Tsai said he would confer with the lawyers representing the students on whether to appeal the ruling.
Peng, who in July was elected to ministry’s curriculum guidelines review subcommittee, said that he had not decided whether to appeal his conviction.
However, if he did eventually choose to accept the verdict, he said he would like to perform his community services at the ministry’s K-12 Education Administration so he would be able to learn more about the division’s work, which might prove helpful when reviewing draft curriculum guidelines for the 12-year national educational system.
Ministry Secretary-General Chen Hsueh-yu (陳雪玉) said that the ministry had dropped all summary criminal charges against the students, and that yesterday’s ruling pertained to indictable offenses.
While the ministry respects the ruling, it had hoped that the judiciary would acquit the students, she said.
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:
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