Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Lin Chun-hsien (林俊憲) yesterday criticized Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) for defending the political rights of alleged criminal groups, which Lin said was an attempt to excuse the violence of the China Unification Promotion Party (CUPP), whose members were accused of assaulting students during a demonstration at National Taiwan University (NTU) on Sept. 24.
Following the incident, in which CUPP members allegedly attacked students protesting a controversial cross-strait music festival at NTU, the Cabinet has vowed to crack down on criminal activities organized under political parties and plans to impose legal measures to deal with such criminal activity.
Chiang on Friday said the Cabinet’s announcement violated the political rights of alleged criminal groups and infringed on the principle of the rule of law.
Chiang said comments by Premier William Lai (賴清德) and Minister of the Interior Yeh Jiunn-rong (葉俊榮) suggested that they did not understand democracy and the rule of law.
He criticized Lai for saying that “everyone has their criteria” to determine what a criminal ring is and Yeh for saying that a new law should be drafted to prevent organized crime groups from infiltrating politics, as law enforcement had lost a legal tool when the Gangster Prevention Act (檢肅流氓條例) was declared unconstitutional.
“Criminal activities can be punished under existing laws, but political rights are basic human rights and should not be determined according to a person’s background or political orientation. Minister Yeh’s comments clearly show that he misunderstands democracy,” Chiang said.
“Who decides on the definition of an organized crime group? Premier Lai or Minister Yeh?” Chiang asked.
The act was found unconstitutional because its definition of gangsters was too broad, identifying people who are “unethical, wandering on the streets or abominable” as possible gangsters, and Yeh’s and Lai’s statements were similar to the act’s willful definition of criminals, Chiang said.
The government has to uphold the basic nulla poena sine lege principle that one cannot be punished for doing something that is not prohibited by law, he said.
Chiang does not understand crime prevention, Lin said.
“The question is not whether criminal groups have the right to get involved in politics, but whether their political participation is criminal, or whether these groups are using the shell of a political [party] for criminal purposes while seeking the legal protection given to a party,” Lin said. “[Chiang’s] open defense of CUPP members assaulting an NTU student with a baton is gangster behavior.”
“The use of batons and smoke grenades is not unusual in violent incidents [associated with certain political parties]. Taiwanese know this well and it cannot be explained away easily,” Lin 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:
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