A group of people claiming to be students at Fu Jen Catholic University’s Department of Psychology yesterday stormed into a meeting room at the Legislative Yuan in Taipei, demanding that Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Rosalia Wu (吳思瑤) explain remarks she made about College of Social Sciences dean Hsia Lin-ching (夏林清) regarding a sexual assault incident on the school’s campus.
The group shouted slogans and brandished flyers that said Hsia was framed by the university and bullied by Wu, who recommended that the school more severely punish Hsia over her handling of the case.
Wu was not in the room at the time, while the intruders were promptly escorted away by police.
Photo: Huang Yao-cheng, Taipei Times
It was the second such incident after two students at the department, Lin Chien-yu (林建宇) and Tseng Hsin-yi (曾信毅), earlier this month attempted to enter a room at the legislature to hand a petition to Minister of Education Pan Wen-chung (潘文忠).
Lin and Tseng said the victim of the sexual assault, surnamed Wu (巫), and her boyfriend, surnamed Chu (朱), fabricated allegations against Hsia.
Wu and Chu had agreed to stop seeing each other before the incident, they said, adding that Wu had been close to the assailant, a student surnamed Wang (王).
Hsia last year held a meeting of the department’s faculty and students, at which the couple were reportedly grilled for accusing Hsia and the department of attempting to cover up the incident.
Hsia’s handling of the incident sparked a widespread outrage, culminating in the school’s Gender Equality Committee last month saying that she would be suspended for one year.
The New Taipei City District Court sentenced Wang to a prison term of 42 months, which can be appealed.
Rosalia Wu yesterday said that she delivered Lin and Tseng’s petition to Pan, who promised to form an investigation committee to determine whether Hsia’s punishment was proportionate.
Ministry of Education Department of Student Affairs and Special Education Director Cheng Nai-wen (鄭乃文) said that the department would hold a Gender Equality Education Committee meeting next week at the soonest to determine whether the university should reinvestigate the case.
Taipei on Thursday held urban resilience air raid drills, with residents in one of the exercises’ three “key verification zones” reporting little to no difference compared with previous years, despite government pledges of stricter enforcement. Formerly known as the Wanan exercise, the air raid drills, which concluded yesterday, are now part of the “Urban Resilience Exercise,” which also incorporates the Minan disaster prevention and rescue exercise. In Taipei, the designated key verification zones — where the government said more stringent measures would be enforced — were Songshan (松山), Zhongshan (中山) and Zhongzheng (中正) districts. Air raid sirens sounded at 1:30pm, signaling the
The number of people who reported a same-sex spouse on their income tax increased 1.5-fold from 2020 to 2023, while the overall proportion of taxpayers reporting a spouse decreased by 4.4 percent from 2014 to 2023, Ministry of Finance data showed yesterday. The number of people reporting a spouse on their income tax trended upward from 2014 to 2019, the Department of Statistics said. However, the number decreased in 2020 and 2021, likely due to a drop in marriages during the COVID-19 pandemic and the income of some households falling below the taxable threshold, it said. The number of spousal tax filings rebounded
A saleswoman, surnamed Chen (陳), earlier this month was handed an 18-month prison term for embezzling more than 2,000 pairs of shoes while working at a department store in Tainan. The Tainan District Court convicted Chen of embezzlement in a ruling on July 7, sentencing her to prison for illegally profiting NT$7.32 million (US$248,929) at the expense of her employer. Chen was also given the opportunity to reach a financial settlement, but she declined. Chen was responsible for the sales counter of Nike shoes at Tainan’s Shinkong Mitsukoshi Zhongshan branch, where she had been employed since October 2019. She had previously worked
Labor rights groups yesterday called on the Ministry of Labor to protect migrant workers in Taiwan’s fishing industry, days after CNN reported alleged far-ranging abuses in the sector, including deaths and forced work. The ministry must enforce domestic labor protection laws on Taiwan-owned deep-sea fishing vessels, the Coalition for Human Rights for Migrant Fishers told a news conference outside the ministry in Taipei after presenting a petition to officials. CNN on Sunday reported that Taiwanese seafood giant FCF Co, the owners of the US-based Bumble Bee Foods, committed human rights abuses against migrant fishers, citing Indonesian migrant fishers. The alleged abuses included denying