The planned police presence at Sunflower movement leader Lin Fei-fan’s (林飛帆) wedding on Sunday sparked controversy yesterday, with the Changhua Police Department saying it will increase the number of officers at the event.
The leaking of a document purporting to detail plans to deploy officers at the event drew reactions late on Wednesday, with many netizens criticizing the allocation of public resources to protect a private event.
Some criticized the leak for disrupting wedding preparations and disclosing the address of the venue.
The number of officers outside the venue needs to be increased now that the wedding site has been made public, Changhua County Police Department Deputy Director-General Chia Li-min (賈立民) said.
Chia said the leaked plan had not been officially approved.
The department is investigating the source of the leak and intends to punish the leaker, he said, adding that Lin had not been informed about the department’s plans.
The department regrets any disruption caused by the exposure of its plans, Chia said.
The wedding is planned to take place at a farm in Changhua City where traffic jams are frequent, while Lin is a public figure, Deputy Minister of the Interior Chiu Chang-yueh (邱昌嶽) said, adding that police had planned security and traffic measures in advance.
“We will communicate with Mr Lin, and ensure security and traffic controls under the premise that his opinion is respected,” Chiu said.
The ministry will ask law enforcement not to disclose any private information, as an officer has already leaked online the wedding site and security arrangements, Chiu said.
Changhua County Commissioner Wei Ming-ku (魏明谷) supported a police presence at the venue, saying he respects the judgement of police intelligence units.
“We do not want any of the related agencies to waste public resources on unnecessary ‘peacekeeping,’” Lin said yesterday.
Lin denied that invitations had been extended to President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝), but did not confirm whether invitations had been extended to Hong Kong pro-democracy activists.
The possible attendance of Hong Kong activists was claimed to be the reason behind increased police presence, after Joshua Wong (黃之鋒) and several other Hong Kong activists escaped an attack at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport earlier this year.
Late on Wednesday, Lin condemned the disclosure of the wedding site as a violation of privacy.
Additional reporting by Chen Wei-han, Tang Shih-ming
and Liu Hsiao-hsin
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:
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
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
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