Before letting three gay men out of an interrogation room at the Chungcheng precinct police station (
Outside the station, members of the media waited to get a glimpse of the three, as gay rights groups shouted slogans accusing police of discrimination against homosexuals. But police said later that the men being held inside the station were so afraid of media exposure that they simply wanted the "nightmare" to end as soon as possible.
The nightmare involved a raid on the AG fitness club in western Taipei by 10 police officers who were following up complaints by local residents that the club was a front for gay people to engage in sexual activities.
The ensuing legal action -- which ended yesterday when the men were found not guilty -- has pitted Taipei police against gay activists who say the entire case is nothing less than gay-bashing.
The case
Police involved in the case have said that when they arrived at the club, they saw two naked men touching each other's private parts in one of many small booths inside. The booths had no doors and so, they said, they arrested the two men for obscene behavior in public.
Police also said that used tissues and condoms were strewn on the floor of the club, and that they suspected the facility was in fact a brothel for homosexuals.
They arrested a body-building trainer at the club, and both he and the gym's owner were later charged with providing customers with equipment (rooms and condoms) for the alleged obscene acts.
That version of the story is disputed by both the defendants and witnesses.
The body training coach at the fitness center, who calls himself A-cheng (
Shortly afterward, a dozen police officers broke in through the back door.
Acting on what they said were suspicions that the gym provided sex services on the premises, the officers allegedly forced two of the gym's patrons to pose for photographs while they were naked, to be used as "proof" of the allegations.
"The two customers who were sitting in one of the cubicles were threatened and told to remove the towels they were wearing. They were then told to get into sexually suggestive positions with each other," said A-cheng.
Another customer -- a law student at the time -- came forward and questioned the appropriateness of the actions being taken by the police. A-cheng claims the man was immediately struck by one of the policeman.
"They are my customers -- you cannot force them to do this or arrest them!" A-cheng says he yelled at the officers, trying to stop them from taking pictures. The police then took him into custody as the owner of the gym, and therefore as an accomplice. He was accused of being the pimp for alleged sexual activities in the gym.
Meanwhile, A-cheng said, a few policemen kicked over trash bins, exposing tissues and rubbish -- ostensibly, he said, to create a more appropriate "crime scene."
The police took the body trainer and the two patrons back to the police station, and in just a few minutes -- as they were being questioned by the police in the basement of the station -- television cameramen appeared outside the station. The media had received a tip-off about the incident.
But when gay rights activists also showed up and added to the circus-like atmosphere, one of the two customers in custody, who identified himself as A-hau (
That, he said, was when he agreed to confess to the police accusations.
A-cheng said the police had asked the two customers to sign a deposition over their alleged indecency.
"It's only a NT$300 fine. Sign it, or we'll do nothing to protect you from the media," A-cheng recalled the police as saying.
Police, however, said it was a cut-and-dried case.
"A-hau admitted to all the charges during the police interrogation. And we recovered over 300 new and used condoms at the scene. There was plenty of evidence against the three men," said Wang Chiao-ling (
A-cheng was charged with providing sex services (
The proof, ultimately, was a box of free condoms that had been set up at the club's front counter.
Prejudice or bad pr?
Gay rights groups told the media that the three gay men had been discriminated against by the police and this was only one of many examples of such actions.
A-cheng recalled that police officers had yelled obscenities and had threatened to beat them up because of their sexual orientation.
"How about if I take off my pants so you can have some fun?" he claimed police had said, followed by statements such as: "You shameless kids! I should beat the shit out of you!"
"Had the activists not been protesting just outside, I probably would have been severely beaten in that basement," A-cheng said.
However, Lee Han-chin (
"The problem is whether they have broken the law, not whether they're gay or not," Lee said. "We look at gay people in a healthy manner. And I think they should do the same themselves.
"When they feel ashamed of themselves, they claim they're being looked down on by others. When this is the case, whatever the police do is regarded as discrimination," Lee said.
Lee also claimed that police raided the gym only after frequent complaints from neighborhood residents.
"They were tired of seeing gay couples displaying explicit intimacy everywhere in the neighborhood," Lee said.
While gay activists have blamed the police for discrimination, Lee thinks the three defendants are being used by the groups.
"They took the three men as hostages of a sort and saw the case as an opportunity to highlight the gay issue," Lee said.
He also said they seemed not to care that the defendants were afraid of being hurt by the publicity.
"I saw how frightened they were of being caught in the media spotlight. I told them the police were also trying to protect them from that," Lee said. "But I also made it clear to them that it was the gay activists that were determined to make their case a media spectacle."
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