Six years ago, a Taiwanese doctoral student in the US, surnamed Tsai (蔡), was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of possession and online distribution of child pornography — offenses that are punishable by between five and 30 years in prison.
Tsai, who was just 27 years old and a student at a top US university, had a fine future ahead of him, but his bright prospects turned dim when he stepped over a red line just when the US was cracking down on the sexual abuse of children.
At the time, some commentators in Taiwan said that Tsai had been treated unfairly, citing the Child and Youth Sexual Exploitation Prevention Act (兒童及少年性剝削防制條例), which holds those who film or produce child pornography liable, but not those who possess such images.
However, the US and European nations believe that the demand for such images “just for enjoyment” creates an incentive for those who provide such images to prey on children, and this makes possession of child pornography images an incitement to crime.
US research has shown that more than 50 percent of people who sexually abuse children have at some time possessed child pornography. Accordingly, US law imposes heavy penalties for possession of child pornography. The US government has since 2003 set up task forces in each state to crack down on child abuse and online child pornography.
Under such circumstances, Tsai could hardly evade criminal liability for distributing child pornography on the Internet.
The same is true of an incident involving Taiwanese exchange student Sun An-tso (孫安佐), who was arrested last week for threatening to shoot people at his high school in Pennsylvania.
People in the US have been taking to the streets to protest against the government’s failure to control guns, which they have said has led to frequent shootings. Young people complain that they cannot grow up safely. At such a sensitive time, Sun allegedly boasted that he would go to his school and shoot it up, which is what has caused such an uproar.
To make matters worse, Sun was found to be in possession of bullets and military equipment, and to have used an iPad provided by his school to search for information about how to buy AK-47 and AR-15 assault rifles. Consequently, the US police are handling the case at a level that comes close to counterterrorism.
The red line that has been crossed in Sun’s case has to do with the connection between immigrants and terrorist attacks. Commenting on the case, a lawyer suggested that Sun could get out of trouble based on the argument that he has only been in the US for a few months and has not yet overcome cultural differences, but this suggestion is naive.
All the hijackers in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon and the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania, had entered the US on student, tourist or business visas. The student who carried out the 2007 Virginia Tech campus shooting was an immigrant from South Korea. The 2013 Boston Marathon bombing was carried out by two ethnic Chechen brothers who had immigrated to the US from Kyrgyzstan.
When calling for “extreme vetting” of immigrants, US President Donald Trump said that what a 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting had in common with a 2015 shooting and bomb attack in San Bernardino, California, is that they were both perpetrated by “immigrants or the children of immigrants.”
New York City was struck by two terrorist attacks toward the end of last year. Of these, the alleged attacker in a Halloween shooting is from Uzbekistan, while the main suspect in an attempted bombing at Times Square subway station is from Bangladesh, both young immigrants.
Taiwanese have the good fortune that their passports give them visa-free entry to many countries. However, in view of the close connection between terrorist attacks and immigrants, the US has already decided to apply “extreme vetting,” so that even those who do not need a US visa will be required, upon entry to the US, to hand over their mobile phones or data, such as their passwords for social media, and anyone who does not comply will be refused entry.
Taiwanese parents who keep their heads down as they slave away to earn money to send their children abroad should sometimes raise their heads and observe what is going on in other countries.
If they keep in touch with the latest developments, it might help prevent such misfortunes from befalling their children.
Sandy Yeh is secretary-general of the Asian Association of Police Studies.
Translated by Julian Clegg
Weeks into the craze, nobody quite knows what to make of the OpenClaw mania sweeping China, marked by viral photos of retirees lining up for installation events and users gathering in red claw hats. The queues and cosplay inspired by the “raising a lobster” trend make for irresistible China clickbait. However, the West is fixating on the least important part of the story. As a consumer craze, OpenClaw — the AI agent designed to do tasks on a user’s behalf — would likely burn out. Without some developer background, it is too glitchy and technically awkward for true mainstream adoption,
On Monday, the day before Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) departed on her visit to China, the party released a promotional video titled “Only with peace can we ‘lie flat’” to highlight its desire to have peace across the Taiwan Strait. However, its use of the expression “lie flat” (tang ping, 躺平) drew sarcastic comments, with critics saying it sounded as if the party was “bowing down” to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Amid the controversy over the opposition parties blocking proposed defense budgets, Cheng departed for China after receiving an invitation from the CCP, with a meeting with
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) is leading a delegation to China through Sunday. She is expected to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Beijing tomorrow. That date coincides with the anniversary of the signing of the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA), which marked a cornerstone of Taiwan-US relations. Staging their meeting on this date makes it clear that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) intends to challenge the US and demonstrate its “authority” over Taiwan. Since the US severed official diplomatic relations with Taiwan in 1979, it has relied on the TRA as a legal basis for all
A delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) officials led by Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) is to travel to China tomorrow for a six-day visit to Jiangsu, Shanghai and Beijing, which might end with a meeting between Cheng and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). The trip was announced by Xinhua news agency on Monday last week, which cited China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) Director Song Tao (宋濤) as saying that Cheng has repeatedly expressed willingness to visit China, and that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee and Xi have extended an invitation. Although some people have been speculating about a potential Xi-Cheng
RSS