Indonesia’s Agency for the Placement and Protection of Indonesian Migrant Workers yesterday called on authorities to ensure that a Taiwanese employer who allegedly raped an Indonesian caregiver is brought to justice.
The agency made the statement after a video was published on the Web site of Suarabmi, an Indonesian media outlet.
The Web site, www.suarabmi.com, published an Indonesian-language report on the story yesterday, with images of a messaging app conversation and a YouTube video that was unavailable because of YouTube’s policy on “nudity or sexual content.”
Photo copied by Chang Jui-hsiung, Taipei Times
The Taichung Police Department said that it received a call on the 1955 hotline — a toll-free, round-the-clock service run by the Ministry of Labor for foreign workers — at about 6pm on Friday.
The hotline said it had been contacted by a 31-year-old Indonesian woman who said she had been raped.
Police and Taichung labor officials went to her employer’s home and brought the woman to the police station.
Photo: CNA
Police notified her employment broker and sent for an interpreter to help with questioning.
However, police said they were unable to get a complete statement, as the woman fainted during questioning.
The woman was taken to a shelter and the report was postponed until yesterday, police said.
However, at about 11am yesterday, the woman was found with one of her wrists cut in an apparent suicide attempt and was taken to hospital.
Her condition has since stabilized, police said.
Police said that according to her incomplete account, she filmed her employer — a 58-year-old man, surnamed Hsieh (謝), whose father she had been hired to take care of — during the assault, with the footage dated July 30 and sent the video to her employment broker and a friend.
Police said the employment broker earlier this month suspected she might have been raped and asked her about it, to which she reportedly said she wanted to gather more evidence and call the police.
The woman and the agency agreed that the agency would collect her from her employer on Friday afternoon, but the woman had already called the 1955 hotline, which had contacted the police.
Police were inquiring into Hsieh’s whereabouts to bring him in for questioning.
Agency Deputy Director Agusdin Subiantoro said the Indonesian authority would pursue legal action to protect its overseas citizens and would ask the Indonesian Economic and Trade Office in Taipei to lodge a formal complaint should the employment broker fail to take action against the man.
The agency did not exclude the possibility of revoking the employment broker’s operating license, Subiantoro said.
The Taichung City Government’s Bureau of Labor said that foreign workers should report any inappropriate activity by employers, adding that the bureau’s labor help hotline is always open.
Additional reporting by Ho Tsung-han and CNA
‘GOOD SIGN’: Thanks to public efforts, the number of COVID-19 cases is on a downward trend, the minister of health said, but told people not to let their guard down The COVID-19 situation appears to be relatively stable and on a downward trend, Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) said yesterday, as he reported 185 domestic COVID-19 cases and 15 deaths. “This seems to be a relatively good sign,” Chen, who heads the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC), told a daily news briefing. In Taipei and New Taipei City, the overall situation seems to be heading in a good direction, he added. He attributed it to public efforts to control the spread of the virus, but warned people against letting their guard down. Of the new local cases, 83 are males and
PHASE 2: The firm’s CEO said that the results were good and the experimental vaccine safe, but added that hoped-for phase 3 trials would be expensive Medigen Vaccine Biologics Corp (高端疫苗) yesterday reported positive results from an interim analysis of phase 2 trials for its COVID-19 vaccine, saying that the vaccine demonstrated high seroconversion rates and geometric mean titer (GMT) figures. A seroconversion rate is the percentage of participants in a trial displaying virus-specific immune memory after being given a vaccine, while the GMT measures the level of neutralizing antibody response, Medigen said. The experimental vaccine has a seroconversion rate of 99.8 percent and its GMT was 662 among the participants aged 20 to 89, while the gauges rose to 99.9 percent and 733 respectively in participants aged
ROLLING OUT DOSES: The expansion aims to speed up Taiwan’s vaccination drive by making more Moderna jabs available to workers at hospitals, the CECC said The Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) yesterday expanded the eligibility for the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine to all healthcare workers and non-healthcare workers in the highest vaccine priority group. The center said that 75,000 doses of the vaccine — half of the first batch Taiwan has received — were on Wednesday distributed to hospitals across the nation with specialized COVID-19 rooms, negative pressure wards and testing services. Thus far, they had only been offered to frontline healthcare workers and non-healthcare workers at the designated hospitals, it said. Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the center, said that the eligibility was
The EU is set to lift travel restrictions for US and Taiwanese residents as soon as this week, in the latest step toward a return to normal, despite concerns over the spread of potentially dangerous COVID-19 variants. Portugal, which holds the rotating presidency of the EU, proposed adding Taiwan, the US, Albania, Hong Kong, Lebanon, Macau, the Republic of Northern Macedonia, Saudi Arabia and Serbia to a so-called “white list” of countries from which non-essential travel to the bloc is allowed, a diplomat familiar with the matter said. Assuming no objections, EU government envoys in Brussels would today approve the expanded
RSS