A man suspected of emptying a bucket of chicken feces at Aegis, a restaurant in Taipei known to support exiled Hong Kong democracy activists, and three suspected accomplices were yesterday apprehended by the authorities.
Prosecutors said that a man surnamed Mo (莫), 27, was asked by three men — a man surnamed Chiang (江) and two brothers surnamed Lee (李) — to carry out feces attacks, with a payment of NT$15,000 for each one.
As of press time last night, Chiang and the Lee brothers were being questioned, prosectutors said, adding that a court had approved to keep Mo detained because he is a flight risk, could tamper with evidence and would likely commit similar offenses.
Photo: CNA
Prosectutors said that the investigation is focusing on whether the four men were affiliated with criminal gangs or political parties — although no ties have so far been uncovered — and their motive.
After the attack at Aegis at about noon on Friday, Taipei police began working around the clock reviewing security camera footage, which led them to apprehend Mo at his apartment in New Taipei’s Sijhih District (汐止) yesterday morning.
A task force has been formed to handle the case, headed by Prosecutor Liao Yen-chun (廖彥鈞) of the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office.
Mo could be charged with assault, intimidation, public insult, property damage and related charges, as Aegis staff were doused with chicken feces — with a female manager experiencing eye inflammation as a result — and kitchen equipment was damaged, Liao said.
Prosecutors have prioritized the incident as a “major criminal case,” given what Aegis has come to symbolize, Liao added.
The restaurant has become a haven and even a place of employment for exiled activists and students from Hong Kong.
The attack is seen as “a brazen challenge” of the authorities, Liao said.
Since the restaurant opened in April, local police have increased patrols, but the attack was carried out in daytime, undaunted by nearby witnesses, he added.
At Mo’s residence, police said that they found a bucket with traces of feces, as well as a hat and running shoes like those seen in security camera footage.
Former Causeway Bay Books manager Lam Wing-kei (林榮基), who before opening his bookstore in Taipei was doused in red paint by two men at a Taipei cafe in April, said that “pro-China forces” were certainly behind the Aegis attack.
“I urge the Taiwan government to impose more severe punishments, to deter these crimes, as right now the price to pay is very low,” he said.
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