The Control Yuan yesterday censured the Ministry of Justice for failing to punish a prosecutor for misconduct as the watchdog body had requested.
The Control Yuan asked the ministry in 2002 to deal with Prosecutor Hou Kuan-jen (侯寬仁) abusing his power by suing the head of the Tai Ji Men Qigong Academy for fraud and tax evasion.
The watchdog agency said Hou had violated the Code of Criminal Procedure (刑事訴訟法) by illegally searching Tai Ji Men president Hong Shih-ho’s (洪石和) property, freezing his assets and prosecuting him in 1997.
A group of Hong’s former students had accused him of taking money from them by claiming to be a god and possessing miraculous powers. Hou, who was working at the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office at the time, indicted Hong and four others based on the students’ complaint.
However, the ministry did not punish Hou for misconduct, but instead assigned another prosecutor to conduct an “administrative investigation” of Hou’s actions. The investigation concluded that Hou was not guilty of any wrongdoing in Hong’s case.
In 2007 the Supreme Court acquitted Hong of all the charges brought against him.
The Control Yuan said that the ministry’s reluctance to punish the prosecutor had substantially “undermined” the credibility of the nation’s judiciary.
Hong, who is also known as Hong Tao-tze (洪道子), founded Tai Ji Men in 1966. The group has tens of thousands of practitioners, and two centers in the US.
In other news concerning the justice ministry, it said radio frequency identification devices (RFID) had been placed on 163 parolees convicted of sexual assault since January 2006.
Chief Secretary Sung Kao-ye (宋國業) said the ministry planned to utilize the newest RFID tags equipped with GPS, which could track sexual offenders more effectively.
The ministry also plans to establish a number of “hot spots,” such as elementary schools, that would use the RFID tags to sound an alarm and alert authorities if the wearer approaches a hot spot, Sung said.
Law enforcement authorities could not completely prevent parolees from reoffending with the technology currently available, but the advanced RFID tags would limit chances of repeat offenses, he said.
DEEPER REVIEW: After receiving 19 hospital reports of suspected food poisoning, the Taipei Department of Health applied for an epidemiological investigation A buffet restaurant in Taipei’s Xinyi District (信義) is to be fined NT$3 million (US$91,233) after it remained opened despite an order to suspend operations following reports that 32 people had been treated for suspected food poisoning, the Taipei Department of Health said yesterday. The health department said it on Tuesday received reports from hospitals of people who had suspected food poisoning symptoms, including nausea, vomiting, stomach pain and diarrhea, after they ate at an INPARADISE (饗饗) branch in Breeze Xinyi on Sunday and Monday. As more than six people who ate at the restaurant sought medical treatment, the department ordered the
A strong continental cold air mass and abundant moisture bringing snow to mountains 3,000m and higher over the past few days are a reminder that more than 60 years ago Taiwan had an outdoor ski resort that gradually disappeared in part due to climate change. On Oct. 24, 2021, the National Development Council posted a series of photographs on Facebook recounting the days when Taiwan had a ski resort on Hehuanshan (合歡山) in Nantou County. More than 60 years ago, when developing a branch of the Central Cross-Island Highway, the government discovered that Hehuanshan, with an elevation of more than 3,100m,
Taiwan’s population last year shrank further and births continued to decline to a yearly low, the Ministry of the Interior announced today. The ministry published the 2024 population demographics statistics, highlighting record lows in births and bringing attention to Taiwan’s aging population. The nation’s population last year stood at 23,400,220, a decrease of 20,222 individuals compared to 2023. Last year, there were 134,856 births, representing a crude birth rate of 5.76 per 1,000 people, a slight decline from 2023’s 135,571 births and 5.81 crude birth rate. This decrease of 715 births resulted in a new record low per the ministry’s data. Since 2016, which saw
SECURITY: To protect the nation’s Internet cables, the navy should use buoys marking waters within 50m of them as a restricted zone, a former navy squadron commander said A Chinese cargo ship repeatedly intruded into Taiwan’s contiguous and sovereign waters for three months before allegedly damaging an undersea Internet cable off Kaohsiung, a Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) investigation revealed. Using publicly available information, the Liberty Times was able to reconstruct the Shunxing-39’s movements near Taiwan since Double Ten National Day last year. Taiwanese officials did not respond to the freighter’s intrusions until Friday last week, when the ship, registered in Cameroon and Tanzania, turned off its automatic identification system shortly before damage was inflicted to a key cable linking Taiwan to the rest of
RSS