A staff member of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office (TECO) in Manila who is preparing to wrap up his second stint at the office would be returning to Taiwan in February with a Philippine police decoration for having helped his host government arrest several criminal suspects.
Jerry Wang (王智勇), who has served as the equivalent of a police attache at the office, first served in the Philippines from July 2011 to January 2016 and was reassigned to Manila in December 2016.
Thanks to Wang’s help, Taiwan and the Philippines have solved several major transnational crimes during his stint in Manila, the TECO said on Saturday.
Photo: CNA
Wang, who received the “Medalya Ng Katangitanging Gawa” (Outstanding Achievement Medal) from the Philippine National Police (PNP) on June 3, was the first foreign national to receive the honor, the TECO said.
Then-PNP chief Archie Gamboa awarded him the medal in a ceremony attended by Representative to the Philippines Michael Hsu (徐佩勇), Wang said yesterday.
According to the Philippine Government Official Gazette, the medal is awarded to PNP members and Philippine civilians and to foreign nationals for distinguished achievement or service in advancement related to public service of the highest order.
The PNP citation praised Wang for facilitating the signing of a memorandum of understanding on combating transnational crime between the two sides, which included the arrest and repatriation of several high-profile Taiwanese criminals.
TECO records showed that Wang played an important role in the arrest of three high-profile criminals in 2018 and last year: former city councilor Ricardo Parojinog, who was hiding in Taiwan and was wanted by the Philippine authorities for drug-related cases; Israeli-American Oren Shlomo Mayer, who was wanted in connection with the murder of a Canadian in New Taipei City; and former Tainan County council speaker Wu Chien-pao (吳健保), who fled Taiwan in 2014 after being convicted of fixing professional baseball games.
Wang said he was able to accomplish the tasks assigned by his Taipei headquarters largely due to the good connections he established during his first term in Manila.
The National Police Agency and the TECO in Manila also provided support to the PNP, which helped the two sides to establish closer cooperation, he added.
“There is a real need for close cross-border anti-crime cooperation between Taiwan and the Philippines due to their geographical proximity. I believe that by frequent anti-crime engagements, the two sides can further strengthen their relations,” he said.
Other operations facilitated by Wang include anti-drug operations, anti-telecommunications fraud operations, anti-firearms operations, anti-kidnapping operations, exchanges of visits by high-ranking officials, workshops in Taiwan and scholarship programs for PNP personnel at Taiwan Central Police University.
Wang’s successor is scheduled to arrive in Manila next month, TECO 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