Hydis Technologies workers and their supporters in Taiwan yesterday held simultaneous protests in Seoul and Taipei over what they called the “brutal and inhumane” treatment of nine South Korean workers during their demonstrations in Taiwan from late last month to Friday last week.
Several dozen human rights and labor rights group members staged a protest yesterday morning against the Ministry of the Interior, accusing the ministry of ordering the National Policy Agency to deal with the protests involving South Korean workers in a heavy-handed manner and demanding that it be held accountable.
At the same time in Seoul, Hydis Technologies workers gathered outside the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs, alleging that the eight workers sent back to South Korea on Wednesday last week were treated in an inhumane way during their deportation, said Lee Sang-eun, the only Hydis worker still in Taiwan.
Photo: Lee Hsin-fang, Taipei Times
Lee said the National Immigration Agency forced two Hydis workers to submit to a strip search and rejected the workers’ request that two other Hydis workers, who at that time had been on hunger strike for 125 hours, receive medical treatment before being deported.
“Their basic human rights were seriously infringed upon and lives treated like dirt,” Lee said in a press release issued by the groups supporting the workers.
The nine Hydis workers arrived Taiwan late last month on their third trip to attempt a meeting with Yuen Foong Yu Group (YFY) chairman Ho Shou-chuan (何壽川) to discuss their demands that Hydis Technologies, a display panel manufacturer owned by E-Ink Holdings, a subsidiary of YFY Group, be reopened and several hundred workers be rehired.
On Wednesday last week, the eight workers were deported, one day after they were arrested outside Ho’s residence, where they had camped and set up a shrine for late Hydis union leader Bae Jae-hyoung, who committed suicide last month after reportedly being threatened with legal action by Hydis management.
Lee was arrested on Friday last week at a general meeting of -SinoPac Holdings, which belongs to YFY Group, on charges of breaching the Social Order Maintenance Act (社會秩序維護法).
He was released that night after the Taipei District Court ruled in favor of a request made by lawyers with the Taiwan Association for Human Rights, who argued that the police did not have sufficient cause to make the arrest and that they did not inform Lee of his rights.
The Ministry of the Interior, the National Police Agency and the National Immigration Agency acted like Ho’s “hired thugs,” exerting their power to protect the magnate and trample on human rights, National Alliance for Workers of Closed Factories member Chung Shu-ching (莊舒晴) said.
Left-Handed Girl (左撇子女孩), a film by Taiwanese director Tsou Shih-ching (鄒時擎) and cowritten by Oscar-winning director Sean Baker, won the Gan Foundation Award for Distribution at the Cannes Critics’ Week on Wednesday. The award, which includes a 20,000 euro (US$22,656) prize, is intended to support the French release of a first or second feature film by a new director. According to Critics’ Week, the prize would go to the film’s French distributor, Le Pacte. "A melodrama full of twists and turns, Left-Handed Girl retraces the daily life of a single mother and her two daughters in Taipei, combining the irresistible charm of
A Philippine official has denied allegations of mistreatment of crew members during Philippine authorities’ boarding of a Taiwanese fishing vessel on Monday. Philippine Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) spokesman Nazario Briguera on Friday said that BFAR law enforcement officers “observed the proper boarding protocols” when they boarded the Taiwanese vessel Sheng Yu Feng (昇漁豐號) and towed it to Basco Port in the Philippines. Briguera’s comments came a day after the Taiwanese captain of the Sheng Yu Feng, Chen Tsung-tun (陳宗頓), held a news conference in Pingtung County and accused the Philippine authorities of mistreatment during the boarding of
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is pushing for residents of Kinmen and Lienchiang counties to acquire Chinese ID cards in a bid to “blur national identities,” a source said. The efforts are part of China’s promotion of a “Kinmen-Xiamen twin-city living sphere, including a cross-strait integration pilot zone in China’s Fujian Province,” the source said. “The CCP is already treating residents of these outlying islands as Chinese citizens. It has also intensified its ‘united front’ efforts and infiltration of those islands,” the source said. “There is increasing evidence of espionage in Kinmen, particularly of Taiwanese military personnel being recruited by the
88.2 PERCENT INCREASE: The variants driving the current outbreak are not causing more severe symptoms, but are ‘more contagious’ than previous variants, an expert said Number of COVID-19 cases in the nation is surging, with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) describing the ongoing wave of infections as “rapid and intense,” and projecting that the outbreak would continue through the end of July. A total of 19,097 outpatient and emergency visits related to COVID-19 were reported from May 11 to Saturday last week, an 88.2 percent increase from the previous week’s 10,149 visits, CDC data showed. The nearly 90 percent surge in case numbers also marks the sixth consecutive weekly increase, although the total remains below the 23,778 recorded during the same period last year,
RSS