Several Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators yesterday urged presidential hopefuls to endorse a proposed amendment that would allow for the caning of sex offenders.
At a press conference in the legislature yesterday, DPP Legislator Hsueh Ling (
She also called on lawmakers to back an amendment to the Sexual Assault Prevention Law (
PHOTO: LO PEI-DER, TAIPEI TIMES
She said she would publicize the names of presidential contenders who did not back the amendment, adding that she hoped it would pass cross-party negotiations this week.
"The future leader of the nation has to respect Taiwanese women," she said. "I will mobilize women's groups to boycott any national leader who does not respect women and does not endorse this important legislation, which aims to intimidate sexual predators."
The proposal came after the police arrested two suspects allegedly involved in the rape of a medical student on March 11. The suspects are believed to have abducted the student as she was walking near Shilin Night Market in Taipei.
One of the suspects is also suspected of having raped a female taxi driver before his capture on Saturday morning.
Although police broke the case in five days, many women have doubts about the safety of Taiwanese society because the two suspects abducted their victim from a city street, Hsueh said.
DPP Legislator Chang Ching-hui (
"Last year alone, 5,638 cases were reported. About 60 percent of the victims were minors and the youngest victim was only three," she said.
Chang said Taiwan should emulate Florida's "Jessica's Law" and introduce severe punishments for malicious or serial sex offenders.
Jessica's Law was passed in Florida in 2005 after a young girl named Jessica Lunsford was raped and killed by a previously convicted sex offender.
The law was introduced amid public outrage as a result of the case, and mandates at least 25-years of prison and lifetime electronic monitoring for convicted sexual predators. Forty-two out of the 50 US states have introduced similar legislation since the passage of the law.
DPP Legislator Chen Shui-hui (
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching