The middle-aged man with hemophilia and AIDS still shudders when he recalls how police officers "interrogated" him last Sunday.
"I can't sleep well these days. I don't know when I will be dragged into the police station again," the patient told social worker Jenet Ye (
On Sunday morning, the patient was talking to his friend on a mobile phone near Taipei Main Station to arrange an outing to Yangmingshan. Two police officers, Chen Wen-tsung (
"I am not a criminal," the patient recalled. "I asked them to show their police ID first. They flipped their wallets and cursed at me, shouting `You haven't got beaten by police, have you?'"
Despite a lack of any criminal evidence, the patient was pushed into their patrol car and brought to the Taipei City Police Headquarters' Chungcheng First Precinct.
The interrogation soon dissolved into shoves and punches, regardless of the patient's health condition. After being grilled for an hour, the hemophiliac was released, then hospitalized in the National Taiwan University Hospital for the next three days.
The latest incident is just one of many times the patient received unwanted police attention. His lanky figure and gaunt cheeks, inevitable effects of medication, make him a suspect in the eyes of police.
"I don't know if you have ever seen him; the patient is scrawny like a drug addict," the precinct's deputy director, Yu Yi-hsien (余一縣), said in a phone interview.
While the officers listed no physical harm in the interrogation record, the hospital report registered bruises and internal hemorrhages on the patient's right shoulder and hip joints.
"They committed paper forgery and malfeasance, and violated the Grand Justices' Interpretation Article 535 to the Constitution, which makes clear that no law authorizes the police to examine a person at any time in any place," the patient's lawyer, Chan Wen-kai (
Under the Criminal Code, public officers who use threats or violence to extract evidence face imprisonment of three to seven years. Article 125 further states that an officer who abuses his or her authority in arresting or detaining a person will be sentenced to prison.
"I did nothing wrong," said the patient, who now lives on an NT$4,000 pension Taoyuan County offers for the physically and mentally challenged.
Born a hemophiliac, the patient has relied on blood-clotting medicine and government support for the past 40 years. He was among the 53 hemophiliacs who contracted AIDS from pharmaceutical giant Bayer's sale of HIV-contaminated blood products in 1983.
In the early 1980s, when the AIDS was first detected, there was no screening test for the HIV virus to prevent it from contaminating blood products. Companies later developed a heat treatment for plasma products to kill off the HIV virus.
According to lawyer Huang Tz-jung (
Twenty years later, the Formosa Transnational Attorneys at Law (
"We don't know how long the process of cross-national prosecution will take," Huang said. For these AIDS survivors, the verdict from the US may be still years away.
For the male patient further wronged by police abuse of authority, coercion by his fellow men seems even more devastating.
"I want to see a psychiatrist," the patient told social worker Ye, nervously rubbing the torn black pants he wore last Sunday.
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