The High Court on Wednesday rejected an appeal from three men who attacked a Hong Kong bookseller in Taipei last year and ordered the three to jointly pay the victim NT$300,000 (US$10,733) in compensation.
The High Court ruling upheld a decision handed down by the Taipei District Court for the same compensation amount in a civil case brought by Lam Wing-kei (林榮基), the Hong Kong bookseller who was attacked by the three men.
The decision is final and cannot be appealed.
The three men attacked Lam, who fled to Taiwan amid fears of Chinese persecution in 2019, while he was having breakfast at a coffee shop in Taipei’s Zhongshan District (中山) on April 22 last year, days before his new bookshop was scheduled to open in the city.
Cheng Chi-lung (鄭啟龍), Tseng Shih-feng (曾士峰), and Tseng Shih-cheng (曾士晟) splashed red paint on Lam, covering his head, upper body and hands with paint and causing damage to his body, clothes and backpack.
The High Court said that one of the attackers had used a smartphone to record the entire attack, which caused Lam mental suffering, so it decided to uphold the district court’s ruling.
Lam had asked for compensation of NT$3 million, but the district court, after considering the socioeconomic conditions of the victims and attackers, ordered the three to pay NT$300,000.
In a criminal case involving the same attack, a district court sentenced the three to three to four months in prison, but a higher court raised the sentences to six to eight months.
The criminal case is pending in the Supreme Court.
Lam’s bookstore in Hong Kong, which sold books which were critical of China’s government, was closed in 2016 after he and several of the store’s shareholders were taken into custody by Chinese authorities.
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