Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Yeh Yu-lan (葉毓蘭) on Wednesday urged the Council of Agriculture (COA) to push forward with a proposal to establish an “animal protection police.”
The proposal was first raised in December last year and supported by 13 legislators across party lines, but has since stalled after discussions with the National Police Agency (NPA) and animal rights groups concluded that the proposal would be impractical given a lack of human and financial resources.
Taiwan Animal Protection Monitor Network secretary-general Ho Tsung-hsun (何宗勳) has continued to push the idea, saying the nation urgently needs a dedicated animal protection police force for five reasons: current animal protection officials do not have the authority to obtain search warrants and lack knowledge about animal protection; they do not do shift work, so they cannot promptly deal with cases that occur at night; they do not have judicial authority and cannot arrest people suspected of animal abuse; police officers are already overworked; and even when animal abuse cases are handled by the police, they are ultimately sent to animal protection authorities for follow-up.
Photo: George Tsorng, Taipei Times
Yeh asked COA Minister Chen Chi-chung (陳吉仲) at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee which agency — the council or the police — is in charge of animal abuse cases.
Chen said they were the responsibility of animal protection officials, but that police would be called in if it is deemed a criminal offense.
Yeh said the process is inefficient, as it involves multiple government agencies.
“Although these animal protection officials are public servants, their lack of power to enforce the law means that people might question their authority,” she said, adding that animal rights groups support the establishment of an animal protection police force.
The council should be in charge of hiring and training police officers to gain knowledge and skills in animal protection, she said.
To solve the personnel problem, Yeh suggested that the council hire the nearly 5,000 examinees who had passed the Grade Three Special Examination for Police Personnel prior to 2011, but are ineligible for Grade Three or higher police positions because they are not graduates of the Central Police University — a policy that the constitutional Interpretation No. 760 issued on Jan. 26, 2018, has said is unconstitutional.
The council should push for a legislative amendment to allow it to proceed with the idea, she added.
Chen said the council would discuss the proposal.
“As someone who has taught at the police college, Yeh is very familiar with police training. She also knows that police are not knowledgeable in all areas,” Ho said.
Only officers specialized in animal protection can deal with such issues, he said.
The NPA could first train a small number of officers to handle animal abuse cases, and then establish an animal protection police force after they have gained experience, he said.
A small number of Taiwanese this year lost their citizenship rights after traveling in China and obtaining a one-time Chinese passport to cross the border into Russia, a source said today. The people signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of neighboring Russia with companies claiming they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, the source said on condition of anonymity. The travelers were actually issued one-time-use Chinese passports, they said. Taiwanese are prohibited from holding a Chinese passport or household registration. If found to have a Chinese ID, they may lose their resident status under Article 9-1
Taiwanese were praised for their composure after a video filmed by Taiwanese tourists capturing the moment a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck Japan’s Aomori Prefecture went viral on social media. The video shows a hotel room shaking violently amid Monday’s quake, with objects falling to the ground. Two Taiwanese began filming with their mobile phones, while two others held the sides of a TV to prevent it from falling. When the shaking stopped, the pair calmly took down the TV and laid it flat on a tatami mat, the video shows. The video also captured the group talking about the safety of their companions bathing
PROBLEMATIC APP: Citing more than 1,000 fraud cases, the government is taking the app down for a year, but opposition voices are calling it censorship Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday decried a government plan to suspend access to Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu (小紅書) for one year as censorship, while the Presidential Office backed the plan. The Ministry of the Interior on Thursday cited security risks and accusations that the Instagram-like app, known as Rednote in English, had figured in more than 1,700 fraud cases since last year. The company, which has about 3 million users in Taiwan, has not yet responded to requests for comment. “Many people online are already asking ‘How to climb over the firewall to access Xiaohongshu,’” Cheng posted on
A classified Pentagon-produced, multiyear assessment — the Overmatch brief — highlighted unreported Chinese capabilities to destroy US military assets and identified US supply chain choke points, painting a disturbing picture of waning US military might, a New York Times editorial published on Monday said. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s comments in November last year that “we lose every time” in Pentagon-conducted war games pitting the US against China further highlighted the uncertainty about the US’ capability to intervene in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. “It shows the Pentagon’s overreliance on expensive, vulnerable weapons as adversaries field cheap, technologically
RSS