People who clashed with police at a Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) rally in Taipei on Saturday would be referred to prosecutors for investigation, said the Ministry of the Interior, which oversees the National Police Agency.
Taipei police had collected evidence of obstruction of public officials and coercion by “disorderly” demonstrators, as well as contraventions of the Assembly and Parade Act (集會遊行法), the ministry said in a statement on Sunday.
It added that amid the “severe pushing and jostling” by some demonstrators, eight police officers were injured, including one who was sent to hospital after losing consciousness, allegedly due to heat stroke.
Photo: screen grab from the People’s Voice YouTube channel
The Taipei Police Department also told a news conference on Sunday evening that the police would soon summon TPP Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌), who led the rally, and are currently identifying other accomplices, who would also be questioned and held accountable.
The TPP held a demonstration near the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall on Saturday to mark the one-year anniversary of a raid by Taipei prosecutors on former TPP chairman and Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲).
Ko, who also ran as the TPP’s presidential candidate last year, was taken into incommunicado detention days after the raid, on Sept. 5 last year.
Photo: Wang Kuan-jen, Taipei Times
He was indicted on Dec. 26 last year on four charges, including misappropriating slush funds of nearly NT$70 million (US$2.29 million) during his presidential campaign, with the total alleged amount in the case exceeding NT$93.71 million.
Ko has denied the charges, calling them politically motivated, and remains in detention as his trial proceeds.
Meanwhile, a separate controversy arose over an image from the rally showing Huang with his left arm, microphone in hand, wrapped around the neck of a police officer.
The ministry’s statement said that police would investigate who had created and circulated an artificial intelligence-altered version of the image in which the police officer appears to be smiling, calling it an attempt to “seriously mislead the public.”
Huang told reporters on Sunday that he had simply put his arm on the officer’s shoulder, while citing the image of the officer smiling as proof that he had not been trying to strangle him.
The police officer, Chen Yu-chien (陳育健), head of the Internal Affairs Office at the Taipei Police Department’s Zhongzheng First Precinct, told reporters that while the image of him smiling had clearly been altered, he did not believe Huang was trying to harm him.
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