The Control Yuan (CY) has censured the Taipei City Police Department and the National Police Agency, saying multiple security incidents involving government agencies over the past two years demonstrated negligence on their part.
The censure report said that after the investigation concluded, Control Yuan committee member Bau Tzong-ho (包宗和) found the Ministry of Justice’s Investigation Bureau (MJIB) had not obtained timely and adequate intelligence on students’ intent to take over the Executive Yuan during the Sunflower movement protests in March last year.
The Sunflower movement refers to student-led protests in March and April last year against the way a trade in services agreement with China was handled by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government. The protesters occupied the legislature for nearly 23 days and at one point stormed the Executive Yuan building.
The Control Yuan’s report said the MJIB was being censured over its lack of timely information causing a significant security oversight and risk to the protection of government property, adding that the activists’ actual taking over of the Legislative Yuan during the Sunflower movement was not being investigated by the Control Yuan, as the Legislative Yuan is not within the Control Yuan’s scope of investigation.
According to sources, the Control Yuan’s investigation was in part due to other incidents, including members of the Freeway Toll Collector Self-Help Organization storming the Executive Yuan’s human resources office and a truck driver who rammed his vehicle into the gate of the Presidential Office Building.
The investigation was sparked by damage to government buildings and their being broken into, as well as the potential danger the events posed to government officials inside, Bau said.
Members of the Freeway Toll Collector Self-Help Organization stormed the human resources office due to complaints that staff laid off when the Electronic Toll Collection system replaced manual toll collection were not given adequate severance pay or were left without jobs, despite previous promises.
A truck driver named Chang Te-cheng (張德正) drove his gravel truck into the Presidential Office Building in January last year, damaging the building’s ground floor and a pillar before being stopped by a guard deploying a bulletproof gate.
Chang said he did so out of frustration over what he considered an unfair sentence handed to him in a domestic violence case.
The Control Yuan said the investigation report was kept under wraps because it included security plans of government buildings.
Another Control Yuan committee member said on condition of anonymity that the case was considered related to national security and as such, the Control Yuan could not give more detailed explanations beyond the reported results.
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