A Taipei City councilor lashed out at the city government yesterday for allowing sex shops to operate near schools in the Tienmu area, calling on officials to ban the stores.
Showing slides to Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (
"These sex shops have targeted young students as their major customers," Lai said. "The businesses know there is no related law to regulate them, so they flagrantly operate around school areas, which has been seriously affecting the students' mental and physical health."
Lai criticized the city's Bureau of Education, Bureau of Police, Bureau of Health and its market supervision division for failing to investigate and ban the shops.
Lai said illegal pills that claim to have the same effect as Viagra are available at the shops.
Health bureau director Chang Hang (
The director of the Taipei City Bureau of Police, Wang Cho-chun (
But Lai said these were passive and ineffective actions.
Lai said she received many petitions from the parents of Taipei American School, Taipei Japanese School and Shihtung Elementary School (士東國小) who were worried about their children being affected by sex shops and demanded the shops be expelled from the community.
"Even the international community cares much more about our educational environment than city government officials," Lai said.
Receiving a petition from Lai with about 2,300 signatures, Ma said he would urge that illegal shops be closed.
But Ma also said the schools should educate students about sex so that they can make themselves "immune from those bad influences," adding that students can also see sex and porn on the Internet.
Taipei City Bureau of Education Director Wu Ching-chi (
A Taipei American School parent representative who was present at the session said most heads of city government bureaus did not know about the problem and that the government lacked data on the sex shops.
But she said she was happy to have the chance to present the problem to the city government because it informs the bureaus of the issue, allows them to investigate further and hopefully allows them to come up with regulations to deal with the issue.
With additional reporting by Debby Wu
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) on Friday condemned Chinese and Russian authorities for escalating regional tensions, citing Chinese warplanes crossing the Taiwan Strait’s median line and joint China-Russia military activities breaching South Korea’s air defense identification zone (KADIZ) over the past two days. A total of 30 Chinese warplanes crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait on Thursday and Friday, entering Taiwan’s northern and southwestern airspace in coordination with 15 naval vessels and three high-altitude balloons, the MAC said in a statement. The Chinese military also carried out another “joint combat readiness patrol” targeting Taiwan on Thursday evening, the MAC said. On
INTIMIDATION: In addition to the likely military drills near Taiwan, China has also been waging a disinformation campaign to sow division between Taiwan and the US Beijing is poised to encircle Taiwan proper in military exercise “Joint Sword-2024C,” starting today or tomorrow, as President William Lai (賴清德) returns from his visit to diplomatic allies in the Pacific, a national security official said yesterday. Commenting on condition of anonymity, the official said that multiple intelligence sources showed that China is “highly likely” to launch new drills around Taiwan. Although the drills’ scale is unknown, there is little doubt that they are part of the military activities China initiated before Lai’s departure, they said. Beijing at the same time is conducting information warfare by fanning skepticism of the US and
NO RIGHT: After 38 years of martial law under the former KMT government, the KMT is the least qualified to accuse others of harboring such intentions, DPP officials said The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday accused the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) of creating a stir on social media by implying that the government supports martial law, adding that the KMT is the least qualified to criticize others after decades of martial law in Taiwan under the former KMT regime. After South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol late on Tuesday night declared martial law (which was rescinded six hours later), the DPP caucus issued a statement on Thread saying that Taiwan’s legislature was facing a situation similar to that in South Korea, which had prompted Yoon to declare martial law. “The South
‘FACT-BASED’: There is no ban, and 2 million Taiwanese have traveled to China this year, which is more than the 285,000 Chinese who visited Taiwan, the council said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday accused China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) of shifting the blame for Beijing’s tourism ban on Taiwan, continuing a war of words that started in the past week. The council’s remark came hours after its Chinese counterpart on Friday accused the government of creating barriers to the resumption of reciprocal group tours across the Taiwan Strait. The TAO accused the MAC of releasing untruthful information and dragging its feet on the tourism sector’s call to establishing ferries linking Pingtung County to China’s Pingtan Island. The MAC failed to respond to overtures to restore direct flights and raised the
RSS