Ministry of National Defense officials yesterday said it took disciplinary measures for the alleged sexual harassment of a female cadet at an air force unit in Taipei and assault at an artillery training center in Pingtung County.
The female cadet was serving at Taipei’s Songshan Air Force Base, where she was allegedly sexually harassed by her superior officer, surnamed Lin (林), who was in charge of the Air Traffic Control and Information Wing at the base.
The female cadet, described as a poster girl for the air force’s recruitment campaign, reportedly quit her military service last month after she was unable to find the channels within the service to lodge her complaints.
Lin, a major general, had allegedly taken notice of the female cadet when she entered service, and allegedly touched her during outdoor exercise and ordered her to accompany him jogging at night.
Lin, who is married, reportedly contacted her on the Line messaging app, where he apparently asked her to sing for him.
He allegedly also asked her to post photographs, by telling her: “It would be best to show pictures of you without any clothing on.”
After she quit her service last month and received her official discharge, the cadet wrote on Facebook about what she had gone through.
Other air force personnel said it was not an isolated case, telling the media that Lin had a long history of intentionally touching, and using suggestive language and other forms of sexual harassment, but they were allegedly told not to make complaints so as not to jeopardize their careers.
Military officials said that the case was taken up for review in the past few days, and have handed out a major demerit to Lin, dismissed him from his supervisory job and transferred him as a consultant at the Air Force Command Headquarters.
ASSAULT
In another incident at an air force unit, a male cadet, surnamed Chen (陳), said he was physically assaulted by two fellow cadets on Sept. 22 at the Air Defense Artillery Training Center in Pingtung County.
Chen said that he was beaten for more than 10 minutes and sustained a concussion and other injuries. An ambulance was called to send him to a nearby hospital for emergency treatment, he said.
Trainees and supervisors at the center were careful to not cross the two assailants, who are allegedly gang members, Chen said, adding that they had behaved in a smug and quarrelsome manner while training at the center.
After the alleged physical assault was reported, air force officials said that Chen and the two assailants had been discharged as of Thursday.
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
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
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