Animal rights campaigners yesterday criticized judges for not imposing a harsher punishment on cat killer Chan Ho-yeung (陳皓揚), who was handed a 10-month jail sentence which can be commuted to a fine.
The Taipei District Court on Thursday found the 24-year-old student from Macau guilty of violating the Animal Protection Act (動物保護法) for strangling to death two cats, handing him a 10-month jail sentence and a fine of NT$350,000.
It was the first ruling in the case and it can be appealed.
Chan was convicted of strangling a popular stray cat named “Big Orange” in December last year and another cat, “Ban Ban,” in August.
Chan, a former graduate student at National Taiwan University’s Department of Chemical Engineering, admitted his guilt during the trial, telling the judges: “I have a psychological problem and I could not control the compulsion to kill a cat.”
He requested a lenient sentence, saying that he had learned his lesson.
Animal rights advocates were upset at the court handing down what they described as a lenient punishment, as Chan can pay a NT$600,000 fine in lieu of the 10-month jail sentence.
“How can he learn any lesson, or learn to respect life with a jail term of just a few months?” one netizen wrote.
“Our justice system still treats animals as objects and not as precious lives,” another netizen wrote.
Others called for the prosecutors to appeal the ruling, in the hope that Chan would receive a stiffer punishment and have to serve time in prison.
Wang Hsien-ju (王嫻如), a university lecturer who fed and cared for “Big Orange,” said she was disappointed with the ruling and questioned the fine.
“The lives of those two cats can never be returned. Can a life be brought back by paying money? Any life is important and neither cat was willing to lose its life,” Wang said.
When Wang testified at the trial she had insisted on referring to “Big Orange” as an individual, and not a mere pet.
Lawyer Lu Chiu-yuan (呂秋遠) said he would like to see the Animal Protection Act amended so that heavier punishments could be handed down as a deterrent.
The deliberate killing of an animal should lead to a maximum seven-year jail sentence, Lu said.
“Along with respect for human life, we should also educate people to respect the lives of animals. It is time for the law to be amended,” he said.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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:
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not