About 10,000 black-clad gangsters, friends and family took part in the funeral of veteran gangster Hsu Hai-ching (
"Police videotaped those alleged gangsters to look into whether they have violated the Organized Crime Prevention Act under the criminal code," Lin Pang-liang (林邦樑), spokesman for the Taipei District Prosecutors' Office said yesterday.
Hsu's funeral service was held at Taipei First Municipal Mortuary at around noon yesterday as thousands of local gangsters and members of crime syndicates from Hong Kong and Japan formed a line to pay their respects to the Taiwan's notorious "godfather" Hsu.
PHOTO: SEAN CHAO, TAIPEI TIMES
The service was a veritable family reunion for Taiwan's criminal underworld. Members represented gangs such as the infamous Bamboo Union (
Taipei City Council Speaker Wu Bi-chu (
The head of the Taiwanese Entertainment Union, Yang Kuang-you (
The funeral began at 12:30pm and drew to a close at 2:30pm. After the funeral service, Hsu's ashes were brought to Taipei County's Chinpaosan cemetery. Thousands of gangsters walked behind Hsu's hearse in a procession that stretched for about 10km along Minquan E. Rd, temporarily blocking traffic. Hundreds of family members and gang members waited at the cemetery for the funeral procession to arrive.
Police set up roadblocks around the cemetery. They also said the funeral services affected the surrounding area, and inconvenienced the nearly 50,000 junior high school graduates in the city who were taking their high school entrance exams yesterday.
Born in 1913, Hsu was a first-generation Taiwanese who got involved in organized crime after the KMT came to Taiwan. He was best known by the nick names "Mosquito Brother" and "the Great Arbitrator." He was also one of the first gangsters to enter Taiwan's political arena by becoming a Taipei City councilor in 1950.
Hsu died on April 6 at the age of 93.
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